The trial in the Georgia racketeering case against Donald Trump and 14 other defendants relating to an alleged conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election could stretch into early 2025, the Fulton county prosecutor, Fani Willis, has said.
In an interview at a global women’s summit held on Tuesday by the Washington Post, Willis said that though she expected the case to be on appeal “for years”, the trial itself would probably take “many months”. She envisioned it ending in “the winter or the very early part of 2025”.
The timeframe laid out by the Atlanta-area district attorney raises the prospect of Trump remaining on criminal trial through the critical stages of next year’s presidential election, including election day on 5 November 2024. Trump is the current frontrunner in the Republican primary race.
The tentative calendar also opens up the prospect, should Trump secure the Republican nomination and go on to win the election, of him still being on trial on his inauguration day, 20 January 2025. The former president faces racketeering charges that carry a sentence under state guidelines of up to 20 years in prison.
Willis said that she did not take election timing into account when pursuing cases. “I don’t, when making decisions about cases to bring, consider any election cycle or election season, it does not go into the calculus,” she said.
She added that it would be a “really sad day if, when you’re under investigation for this shoplifting charge, you could go run for city council and then the investigation would stop. That’s foolishness.”
Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Trump’s co-defendant in the Georgia case Rudy Giuliani, criticized Willis for making the comments. In a statement to Politico, he said that the possibility of stretching out the trial beyond the 2024 election “further demonstrates how this entire fraudulent case is part of the Democrat Party and permanent Washington political class’s attempt to keep Donald Trump out of the White House”.
The scheduling of the multiple trials that Trump now faces is likely to pose major challenges for his presidential campaign. He is now on trial in New York for a civil fraud case involving the financial statements of his business, the Trump Organization.
He is also facing 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases – the Fulton county election subversion case, a New York criminal indictment over an alleged hush money payment to an adult film actor, and two federal cases. The federal prosecutions involve his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified government documents in his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.
The two federal trials are scheduled to begin in March and May respectively – in the thick of Republican primary voting.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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Nineteen defendants were initially included in the sprawling racketeering prosecution in Georgia. That number has been reduced after four defendants accepted plea deals in the case.
They include three of Trump’s lawyers during his attempt to avoid defeat in the 2020 election – Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell. Videos of interviews conducted with them during the plea agreement were leaked this week to ABC News and the Washington Post.
Willis said the source of the leaks was “absolutely not my office”. She said the disclosure of the confidential recordings was “clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial”.
Her office has requested an emergency protective order over discovery materials in the Fulton county case.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
