Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to members of the media on the US Department of Justice constructing in Washington, DC, on August 1, 2023.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Special counsel Jack Smith argued Monday that there was no good reason why Donald Trump’s federal election interference trial must be delayed until spring of 2026, as the previous president is requesting.
To set a trial greater than two-and-a-half-years away “would deny the general public its right to a speedy trial,” Smith wrote in a six-page filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
Trump’s filing “cites inapposite statistics and cases, overstates the quantity of recent and non-duplicative discovery, and exaggerates the challenge of reviewing it effectively,” the special counsel wrote.
Smith previously suggested Trump’s trial should start on Jan. 2.
Trump’s attorneys last week proposed an April 2026 trial date, arguing that they need that point as a way to sift through hundreds of thousands of pages of complex discovery materials. Their court filing included a graphic purportedly showing that those discovery materials would stack as much as greater than times the peak of the Washington Monument.
A graphic from a court filing from former President Donald Trump’s legal team proposing that the federal election interference trial start in April 2026.
Source: Fulton County Courthouse
Smith shot back in Monday’s filing that such comparisons “are neither helpful nor insightful.”
“In reality, comparisons comparable to those are a distraction from the difficulty at hand — which is determining what’s required to organize for trial,” he wrote.
The argument from Trump’s lawyers “rests on the faulty assertion that it’s needed for a lawyer to conduct a page-by-page review of discovery for a defendant to receive a good trial,” Smith wrote. “However the defendant can, should, and apparently will adopt the advantages of electronic review to cut back the amount of fabric needed to be searched and manually reviewed.”
Former US President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump hits balls on the practice range ahead of the LIV Golf Invitational series tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in Bedminster, Latest Jersey, on August 9, 2023.
Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images
Smith contended that hundreds of thousands of pages of materials sent to Trump’s team were provided out of an abundance of caution and shouldn’t require significant time to sift through.
Federal prosecutors also provided the defense with a set of key documents believed to be crucial for the case, the special counsel added.
Trump has pleaded not guilty within the case, which alleges he illegally conspiring to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden within the 2020 election. The case centers largely on the events of the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump’s supporters who bought his false claims of election fraud.
The case is one among two federal indictments against Trump stemming from investigations led by Smith.
Trump has also been indicted in Georgia on charges of attempting to reverse his loss in that state’s 2020 election. The previous president faces additional charges in Manhattan related to hush money payments made to a porn star who says she had an extramarital affair with him.
Trump had pleaded not guilty within the federal cases and the Manhattan case. He faces a Friday deadline to give up in Georgia. A state judge in Atlanta set Trump’s bond at $200,000 earlier Monday afternoon.
