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      Manhattan Judge May Be Open to Moving Trump Trial Date as Cases Mount

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      The judge, Juan M. Merchan, said in a letter that while he was not yet ready to discuss potential changes to the March 25, 2024, trial date, he would be willing to have the conversation in February.The judge presiding over the criminal case against Donald J. Trump in Manhattan signaled that he could be open to changing the date of the trial — now set for March 2024 — in light of the handful of other potential trials the former president now faces.But in a letter sent to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, said he would wait until February to have that discussion, given Mr. Trump’s “rapidly evolving trial schedule.”In March, the Manhattan district attorney’s office brought charges against Mr. Trump stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star. The trial was soon scheduled for next March. But in the months that followed, Mr. Trump was indicted three more times. The cases, taken together, have created a legal logjam that coincides with the former president’s third run for the White House.In his letter to one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, Justice Merchan wrote that he did not believe it would be fruitful to discuss a potential change this month, “in light of the many recent developments involving Mr. Trump.”Justice Merchan said that such a conversation would be more productive in February, when prosecutors and defense lawyers are scheduled to meet for a decision on motions.“We will have a much better sense at that time whether there are any actual conflicts and if so, what the best adjourn date might be for trial,” the judge wrote in the letter, which was dated Sept. 1, 2023, but only recently became public.The letter provides a look behind the scenes at the complications that have ensued after Mr. Trump was charged with felonies by three different prosecutors in four different states. He is scheduled to be put on trial four times next year, though many experts believe that only one or two of the trials will actually take place, given the complexity of the scheduling and the fact that Mr. Trump is again running for president.The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has said that he would not insist on being the first to try Mr. Trump, though he added that scheduling decisions ultimately fell to Justice Merchan.The judge’s letter was a response to Mr. Blanche, who on Aug. 30 asked for a status conference at which to discuss the trial date. Because Justice Merchan declined the request, lawyers will be expected to keep to the schedule the court already set, and the pretrial process will remain on track, regardless of whether the trial itself takes place as scheduled.Justice Merchan has also spoken to Tanya S. Chutkan, the federal judge presiding over the case in which Mr. Trump is charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and that is scheduled to go to trial on March 4, 2024. It is not clear what they discussed, but prosecutors have said that in that case, the government could take between four and six weeks to present its case to the judge.Mr. Trump’s other federal trial is scheduled for May 20, 2024 — in that case, Mr. Trump is charged with illegally retaining dozens of classified documents. His fourth trial — in Georgia, and also related to his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — has yet to be scheduled.Kate Christobek More

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      Special Grand Jury in Georgia Recommended Charging Lindsey Graham in Trump Case

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      A special grand jury made the recommendation last year after hearing from dozens of witnesses on whether Donald J. Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election.A special grand jury that investigated election interference allegations in Georgia recommended indicting a number of Trump allies who were not charged, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, and Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser.In its final report, which a judge unsealed on Friday, the panel also recommended charges against Boris Epshteyn, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s main lawyers, as well as a number of other Trump-aligned lawyers, including Cleta Mitchell and Lin Wood.Mr. Trump and 18 allies were charged in a racketeering indictment that was handed up last month by a regular grand jury in Fulton County, Ga.The special grand jury, which Fulton County prosecutors convened to help with the investigation, met at an Atlanta courthouse from June to December of last year. It spent much of that time hearing testimony from 75 witnesses on the question of whether Mr. Trump or any of his allies had sought to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.Under Georgia law, the panel could not issue indictments itself. In the Trump case, that task fell to a regular grand jury that was seated over the summer. The regular grand jury heard evidence from prosecutors for one day in early August before voting to indict all 19 defendants whom prosecutors had sought to charge.The special grand jury’s mandate was to write a report with recommendations on whether indictments were warranted in the investigation, which was led by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Ms. Willis asked to convene a special grand jury because such panels have subpoena powers, and she was concerned that some witnesses would not cooperate without being subpoenaed.Portions of the report were publicly released in February, but those excerpts did not indicate who had been recommended for indictment, or on what charges. The release of the full nine-page report this week was ordered by Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court.Read the Report by the Special Grand Jury in Georgia That Investigated President TrumpThe special grand jury investigated whether Mr. Trump interfered in the 2020 election in the state. Their report included recommendations on whether indictments were warranted, and for whom.Read DocumentMr. Epshteyn declined on Friday to comment about the report. Others whom the advisory panel recommended for indictment did not immediately respond to requests for comment.After the special grand jury recommended indictments of about 40 people, the district attorney had to weigh which prosecutions would be the most likely to succeed in court. A potential case against Mr. Graham, for example, would have been hampered by the fact that there were conflicting accounts of telephone calls he made to a top Georgia official. Mr. Graham has repeatedly said that he did nothing wrong.Fulton County prosecutors indicated in court filings last year that they were interested in those calls by Mr. Graham, a onetime critic of Mr. Trump who became a staunch supporter. They were made shortly after the November 2020 election to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state.Mr. Raffensperger has said that in those calls, Mr. Graham suggested the rejection of all mail-in votes from Georgia counties with high rates of questionable signatures, a step that would have excluded many more Democratic votes than Republican ones. But the phone calls are not known to have been recorded, and recollections differ about exactly what was said — factors that probably figured in the decision not to charge Mr. Graham.In a filing seeking Mr. Graham’s testimony, prosecutors said that he “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about re-examining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” and “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud” during those calls.A few weeks after the calls, Mr. Trump followed up with a call of his own to Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, saying that he wanted to “find” roughly 12,000 votes, enough to reverse his loss in Georgia. Mr. Trump’s call, which was recorded, is the basis for a number of charges in the 98-page indictment.Mr. Graham has characterized as “ridiculous” the idea that he had suggested to Mr. Raffensperger that he throw out legally cast votes, and the senator’s lawyers have argued that he was carrying out a legitimate investigative function as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a bid to avoid testifying before the special grand jury last year, Mr. Graham waged a legal battle that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately, he was forced to testify.Afterward, he said that he had spent two hours giving testimony behind closed doors, where he said he “answered all questions.”Mr. Graham has been critical of prosecutors in the Georgia case and the three other criminal cases against Mr. Trump, characterizing them as liberals who were “weaponizing the law” to unfairly target the former president.After the Georgia indictment, Mr. Graham told reporters in South Carolina that he was not cooperating with the Fulton County prosecutors, dismissing the idea as “crazy stuff.”“I went, had my time, and I haven’t heard from them since,” he said. More

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      Hearings in Two Trump Jan. 6 Cases Set for Monday

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      Proceedings before federal judges in Washington and Atlanta could begin to address some of the many complexities and scheduling challenges in the cases against the former president.By the end of Monday, another piece could be put in place in the complicated jigsaw puzzle of the four criminal cases facing former President Donald J. Trump: A date could be chosen for Mr. Trump’s federal trial on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election.At a hearing on Monday morning in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan was considering widely differing proposals for the date of the trial, and could select one.In dueling court papers filed this month, the government and Mr. Trump’s lawyers each proposed ambitious schedules for the trial, with prosecutors asking for the case to be put before a jury as early as Jan. 2 and the defense requesting that it be put off for more than two years, until April 2026. As Judge Chutkan considered the arguments, another legal proceeding related to Mr. Trump was set to play out on Monday in federal court in Atlanta, underscoring the complexity of bringing the charges against him to trial.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., recently proposed starting a trial in her case against Mr. Trump, on charges of tampering with the 2020 election in that state, in March. But that date remains somewhat uncertain not only because of the jockeying among prosecutors over the timing of the different cases, but also because some of Mr. Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the case have asked for the trial to start as early as this fall while others want to slow things down.At the same time Judge Chutkan took the bench in Washington, a federal judge in Atlanta was scheduled to hold a hearing to determine if one of those co-defendants in the Georgia case, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, can remove his charges from the state judicial system and have them heard in federal court.Mr. Meadows has argued that he is immune to the state charges because all of the acts underlying the accusations against him were performed as part of his official duties as a federal official. But prosecutors working for Ms. Willis have countered that the charges relate to Mr. Meadows’s political activities during a re-election campaign, which fall outside of his formal government responsibilities.Mr. Meadows was on the line in January 2021, when Mr. Trump placed a call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, asking him to “find” enough votes for Mr. Trump to win the election there. Prosecutors issued a subpoena last week to have Mr. Raffensperger, among others, testify at the hearing in Atlanta.In most legal proceedings, the selection of a trial date is a largely mundane matter, depending on the number of defendants, the amount of evidence, and the schedules of the judge, prosecutors and defense lawyers.But the timetables for Mr. Trump’s four trials have taken on outsize importance. That is not only because there are so many of them, each one needing a slot, but also because they are unfolding against Mr. Trump’s crowded calendar as the candidate leading the field for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.As a further complication, Mr. Trump has made no secret in private conversations with his aides of his desire to solve his jumble of legal problems by winning the election. If either of the two federal trials he is confronting is delayed until after the race and Mr. Trump prevails, he could seek to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general simply dismiss the matters altogether.At Monday’s hearing in Washington on the federal election charges, Judge Chutkan has said she also intends to discuss a schedule for handling the small amount of classified material that may emerge as evidence in the case. If she ultimately agrees to the government’s request to start the trial in January, it would be the first of Mr. Trump’s four cases to be tested in a courtroom.Prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, brought the case early this month, filing an indictment against Mr. Trump in Washington after months of intense investigation. The indictment charges the former president with three overlapping conspiracies to defraud the United States, to obstruct the certification of the election during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, and to deprive people of the right to have their votes counted.Another one of Mr. Trump’s trials, in which he has been charged with 34 felonies connected to hush money payments to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 election, is set to start in March in a state court in Manhattan. Another, in which he stands accused of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents after leaving office, is set to go before a jury in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., near the end of May. More

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      The Trump Indictments Are an Indictment of America

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      There are two ways to read the stack of indictments and impeachments the 45th president of the United States has amassed so far. They can be regarded, accurately, as America’s case against Donald Trump. Indictment is a legal action whereas impeachment is a political act, but when taken together the texts provide a singular and consistent case. They capture the progression of transgression evident in Trump’s political campaigns, his presidency and its aftermath, with each escape from accountability yielding a bolder and more reckless iteration of Trump.But the documents also reveal Trump’s case against the United States — dismissing America as a nation where politics serves as a defense against law and repudiating its people as easily and willingly misled, by ever escalating levels of deceit.Trump’s first indictment, for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal payments to women with whom he had extramarital affairs, offers an early and straightforward example of his deception. Concerned that the revelations would hurt his presidential campaign — or make him lose to Hillary Clinton by even more than expected or just antagonize Melania — he “orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication,” per the statement of facts compiled by the district attorney of New York County. Whether or not that effort also involved violations of electoral or tax law, it succeeded in hiding “damaging information from the voting public.” In short, the indictment contends, Trump obscured the truth.Once in office, Trump’s power to deceive grew and his fear of exposure diminished. His attempted strong-arming of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in 2019 — dangling security assistance and a possible White House visit in exchange for “a favor” — was in keeping with his actions during the 2016 race, just more daring. He was still trying to improve his electoral prospects. But instead of using his own money to suppress negative stories, Trump was now withholding congressionally appropriated funds from Ukraine in order to generate negative stories about his potential 2020 general-election opponent, Joe Biden, and to feed the notion that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. The first article of impeachment in the Ukraine affair asserts that Trump “engaged in this scheme” — there’s that word again — “for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit.”Another scheme, a bigger lie. This time, Trump didn’t just hide the truth; he sought to distort it. And even when “faced with the public revelation of his actions,” the articles of impeachment note, the president continued to “openly and corruptly” urge Ukraine to open investigations that would help Trump politically. Such shamelessness is possible only from a president confident that enough voters will share it.The recent indictment by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., covers a multitude of alleged crimes — like issuing false statements and filing false documents, forgery, conspiracy to defraud the state, solicitation of the violation of an oath by a public officer — but it comes down to a single corrupt purpose: Once Trump lost the 2020 election, the outgoing president sought to reverse or at least delegitimize the outcome.We experience Trump’s impeachments and indictments only in the order in which they came out, a sequence that does not neatly track the chronology or intensity of his misdeeds. Trump progressed from hiding reality with the hush-money payments (indictment No. 1), to remaking reality with the attempted shakedown of Ukraine (impeachment No. 1), to ignoring reality with his insistence that he had won re-election and that other officials should affirm that belief (indictment Nos. 3 and 4). The next step was obvious — to change reality by force. So came Jan. 6 (addressed in impeachment No. 2 as well as indictments Nos. 3 and 4, for those keeping score at home).Trump’s mendacity about the 2020 election was legal; as Jack Smith, the latest special counsel appointed by the Justice Department to investigate him, put it, “the Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud.” His alleged actions and conspiracies in furtherance of those lies — pushing officials to ignore the popular vote in their states, disenfranchising voters, encouraging fake slates of electors — were not, according to the indictment. And once the attempts to claim a counterfactual victory were rejected in the courts, in the states and by his own vice president, the call for violence was all that was left. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump declared on Jan. 6.That line was quoted in Trump’s second impeachment, in support of its lone article, incitement of insurrection. It was one of three utterances by the president included in the document. The other two were, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide” (also from Jan. 6) and then a single word, “find,” from Trump’s request to the secretary of state of Georgia to manufacture more votes for him, just enough to win. Those quotes also show the Trumpian progression: The lie, the scheme to support it and the brutishness to enforce it.Trump’s indictment for retaining and concealing classified information after leaving office — and for obstructing the investigations into the matter — nicely captures the former president’s attitude toward truth and law. According to the document, when he consulted his lawyers about how to respond to a grand jury subpoena for any classified material in his possession, Trump asked, “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” (As if you can just ghost a federal grand jury.) He also wondered aloud, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”Isn’t it better just to lie? For Trump, the answer is almost always yes.Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who resisted Trump’s blandishments.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesIn early 2018, the political activist Amy Siskind published “The List: A Week-By-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year.” Faithful to its title, the book numbered various misdeeds of the early Trump presidency — each norm and institution degraded, every truth or conflict of interest ignored — totaling thousands of offenses, large and small. The work was especially useful in a refresher-course sort of way; as I wrote then, “it is remarkable how much we can forget, in the shock of the moment, about the previous shock of the moment.”I thought about “The List” once again while reading and rereading the Trump indictments and impeachments. The descriptions of the former president’s alleged actions in these documents — even just a sampling of the verbs — offer their own refresher on the past seven years:Abused. Compromised. Persisted in openly and corruptly urging and soliciting. Served to cover up. Threatened the integrity. Betrayed his trust. Repeatedly and fraudulently falsified. Disguised. Endeavored to obstruct. Did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate. Pursued unlawful means. Used knowingly false claims. Publicly maligned. Refused to accept. Hid and concealed. Constituted a criminal organization. Falsely accused. And, of course, spread lies.One of the Trump era’s recurring questions (a bit quaint now) has been whether Trump lies knowingly or truly believes the untruths he professes. These documents leave little doubt that Trump was told, repeatedly, that his lies were just that, and by officials close to him. David French summarized the latest indictment against Trump in The Times this way: “The Georgia case is about lies. It’s about lying, it’s about conspiring to lie, and it’s about attempting to coax others to lie.”Much the same could be said of the other Trump indictments and of his impeachments, too. They’re all about his lies and about the country’s willingness to countenance them.There are individuals in these documents like Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who, when Trump urged him to appoint new presidential electors from the state, responded: “I voted for you. I worked for you. I campaigned for you. I just won’t do anything illegal for you.” But there are many who believe and enable Trump’s lies, whether out of conviction, allegiance or expedience. His overwhelming lead in the early polling for the next Republican nomination and his current tie with Biden in a possible 2024 rematch exist despite — or, at times, because of — those lies.Trump’s impeachments in 2019 and 2021 did not yield convictions in his Senate trials, and now, after the indictments of 2023, new trials await. Yet even criminal convictions would not ease the political challenge that Trumpism poses. They may even exacerbate it.Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, in his individual statement appended to the 1974 report by the Senate committee on Watergate, warned that “law alone will not suffice to prevent future Watergates.” Ervin wrote that “the only sure antidote” is to elect leaders who understand the principles of our government and display the intellectual and moral integrity to uphold them. Their election is not in the hands of prosecutors or lawmakers, but of voters. Our choices, as Smith might put it, are also outcome-determinative.It is fitting that legal as well as political remedies have been brought to bear on Trump. His transgressions span both worlds and play out in the haze between them. Trump seems to hope that politics can save him from law. That belief is his indictment of both.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Many of Trump’s Trials Will Happen Before the Election?

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      Donald J. Trump is the target of four separate criminal indictments, but the prosecutions could drag on for months or even years.Three different prosecutors want to put Donald J. Trump on trial in four different cities next year, all before Memorial Day and in the midst of his presidential campaign.It will be nearly impossible to pull off.A morass of delays, court backlogs and legal skirmishes awaits, interviews with nearly two dozen current and former prosecutors, judges, legal experts and people involved in the Trump cases show. Some experts predicted that only one or two trials will take place next year; one speculated that none of the four Trump cases will start before the election.It would be virtually unheard of for any defendant to play a game of courthouse Twister like this, let alone one who is also the leading contender for the Republican nomination for the presidency. And between the extensive legal arguments that must take place before a trial can begin — not to mention that the trials themselves could last weeks or months — there are simply not enough boxes on the calendar to squeeze in all the former president’s trials.“This is something that is not normal,” said Jeffrey Bellin, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who now teaches criminal procedure at William & Mary Law School and believes that Mr. Trump might only be on trial once next year. “While each of the cases seems at this point to be strong, there’s only so much you can ask a defendant to do at one time.”Any delay would represent a victory for Mr. Trump, who denies all wrongdoing and who could exploit the timeline to undermine the cases against him. Less time sitting in a courtroom equals more time hitting the campaign trail, and his advisers have not tried to hide that Mr. Trump hopes to overcome his legal troubles by winning the presidency.If his lawyers manage to drag out the trials into 2025 or beyond — potentially during a second Trump administration — Mr. Trump could seek to pardon himself or order his Justice Department to shut down the federal cases. And although he could not control the state prosecutions in Georgia or Manhattan, the Justice Department has long held that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted, which very likely applies to state cases as well.Ultimately, the judges overseeing the four cases might have to coordinate so that Mr. Trump’s lawyers can adequately prepare his defense without needlessly delaying the trials. Judges are permitted under ethics rules to confer with one another to efficiently administer the business of their courts, experts said, and they periodically do so.“The four indictments can appear to resemble four cars converging on an intersection that has no lights or stop signs — but that won’t happen,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law. “Well before the intersection, the judges will figure it out.”For now, Mr. Trump’s court schedule looks to be nearly as crowded as his campaign calendar, with potential trials overlapping with key dates in the Republican primary season. Claiming he is a victim of a weaponized justice system that is seeking to bar him from office, Mr. Trump may end up bringing his campaign to the courthouse steps.A federal special counsel, Jack Smith, has proposed Jan. 2 of next year (two weeks before the Iowa caucuses) as a date for Mr. Trump to stand trial in Washington on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. In a Thursday night court filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers countered with a proposed date of April 2026.Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney who this week announced racketeering charges against Mr. Trump, accusing him of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse Georgia’s election results, wants that trial to begin on March 4 (the day before Super Tuesday).It is possible that the election interference case brought against Mr. Trump by special counsel Jack Smith may be given scheduling priority, the experts said.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Smith’s recent case in Washington, and Ms. Willis’s in Georgia, were filed after Mr. Trump was already scheduled for two additional criminal trials next spring: in New York, on March 25, on state charges related to a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels; and in Florida, on May 20, on federal charges brought by Mr. Smith accusing Mr. Trump of mishandling classified material after leaving office.Although the New York and Florida indictments were unveiled earlier, affording them first crack at the calendar, some experts now argue that they should take a back seat to the election-related cases, in Georgia and Washington, in which the charges strike at the core of American democracy. Trial scheduling is not always a first-come, first-served operation, and deference could be given to the most serious charges.In a radio interview last month, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said that having been the first to indict did not necessarily mean he would insist on being the first to put the former president on trial. However, he said, the judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, ultimately controls the calendar.“We will follow the court’s lead,” Mr. Bragg said.There has not yet been any direct communication among judges or prosecutors about moving the Manhattan case, according to people with knowledge of the matter.Still, Mr. Bragg’s comments suggest that he would not oppose moving the Manhattan case, which carries a lesser potential punishment than the three others, backward in line.“My own belief is Alvin Bragg will be true to his word and remain flexible in the interests of justice,” said Norman Eisen, who worked for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and believes that prosecutors might be able to squeeze in three Trump trials next year.And Mr. Eisen, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued that voters deserve to know whether Mr. Trump was convicted of subverting the will of the people in the previous election before they vote in the next one.“There could not be a more important question confronting the country than whether a candidate for the office of the presidency is innocent or guilty of previously abusing that office in an attempted coup,” he said.The most likely candidate to take over Mr. Bragg’s March trial date would be Mr. Smith and his election interference case. Recently, nearly a dozen Republican-appointed former judges and high-ranking federal officials submitted a brief to the judge overseeing that case, arguing that the trial should take place in January as Mr. Smith has proposed and citing a “national necessity” for a “fair and expeditious trial.”But this is the case in which Mr. Trump’s lawyers have asked for a 2026 trial date, citing the voluminous amount of material turned over by the government — 11.5 million pages of documents, for example — that the defense must now review. Mr. Trump’s lawyers estimated that to finish by the prosecution’s proposed January trial date would mean reading the equivalent of “Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace,’ cover to cover, 78 times a day, every day, from now until jury selection.”In that case, Mr. Smith brought a narrow set of charges against Mr. Trump in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, totaling four felony counts, and with no co-defendants.In contrast, Ms. Willis’s election case is a sweeping 98-page indictment of not only Mr. Trump, who faces 13 criminal counts, but also 18 co-defendants, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. Already, Mr. Meadows has petitioned for his case to be moved from state to federal court, and other defendants are likely to follow suit. That process could take months and could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, probably making Ms. Willis’s proposed trial date of March 4 something of a long shot.In contrast to the relatively narrow election interference case brought by Mr. Smith in federal court, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, has charged Mr. Trump and his associates with a multitude of felonies related to the 2020 presidential election.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe sheer size of Mr. Trump’s Georgia case, and the fact it was the last of the four cases to be brought, suggests any Georgia trial of Mr. Trump could be delayed even beyond next year.It is exceedingly rare for a criminal defendant to face so many trials in such a concentrated period of time. The once high-flying lawyer Michael Avenatti seemed to be heading for three federal trials after he was charged in Manhattan in 2019 in a scheme to extort the apparel giant Nike; and, separately, with stealing money from Ms. Daniels, a former client; and in California, with embezzling money from other clients. (He was eventually convicted in the New York trials and pleaded guilty in the California case.)E. Danya Perry, a lawyer who represented Mr. Avenatti in the Nike case, the first to go to trial, said the challenge was “sequencing the cases in a way that would be most advantageous” to her client. And because there was some overlap in the evidence, she said, the defense had to be careful not to open the door for prosecutors to introduce evidence against Mr. Avenatti from another of the cases.“You’re not just trying the case in front of that particular judge,” Ms. Perry said. “Evidence from one case could bleed into other cases.”Before any trial, Mr. Trump’s cases are also likely to become bogged down as his lawyers review and potentially argue over large amounts of documents and other case material turned over by the government. Certain judicial rulings could also lead to drawn-out pretrial appeals.In the Florida documents case, disputes over the use of classified information could delay the proceeding as well. And in the federal court in Washington, which is already contending with lengthy backlogs amid prosecutions of hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have suggested they plan to litigate complex constitutional issues, including whether some of Mr. Trump’s false claims about the election were protected by the First Amendment.Even the jury selection process could drag on for weeks or months, as courts summon huge pools of prospective jurors for questioning over whether they harbor bias in favor of or against the polarizing former president.Michael B. Mukasey, a former U.S. attorney general and longtime Manhattan federal judge, said because of the complex issues raised in all four of Mr. Trump’s cases, “I think the odds are slim to none that any of them gets to trial before the election.”And Mr. Trump’s criminal cases are not the only courtroom battles he’s waging.In October, he faces trial in a civil suit filed by Attorney General Letitia James of New York, accusing him, his company and three of his children of a “staggering” fraud in overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars. In January, Mr. Trump faces two civil trials arising from private lawsuits: one a defamation claim by the writer E. Jean Carroll and the other accusing him of enticing people into a sham business opportunity.“We fully expect both cases to go to trial in January 2024,” said Roberta A. Kaplan, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the two private suits.Although Mr. Trump need not be in court for the civil cases, he almost certainly will have to attend the criminal trials, said Daniel C. Richman, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor and now a professor at Columbia Law School.“If you asked all the prosecutors in each case, they’d firmly and sincerely say that they want these trials to happen in the first half of 2024,” Mr. Richman said. “But wishing does not make it so.”Maggie Haberman More

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      A Majority of Americans Support Trump Indictments, Polls Show

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      Recent polls conducted before the Georgia indictment showed that most believed that the prosecutions of the former president were warranted.Former President Donald J. Trump’s blistering attacks on prosecutors and the federal government over the cascade of indictments he faces do not appear to be resonating much with voters in the latest polls, yet his grip on Republicans is further tightening.A majority of Americans, in four recent polls, said Mr. Trump’s criminal cases were warranted. Most were surveyed before a grand jury in Georgia indicted him over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election, but after the federal indictment related to Jan. 6.At the same time, Mr. Trump still holds a dominant lead over the crowded field of Republicans who are challenging him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who continues to slide.The polls — conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, ABC News/Ipsos and Fox News — showed that Americans remain divided along party lines over the dozens of criminal charges facing Mr. Trump.The takeaways aligned with the findings of a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, in which 22 percent of voters who believed that Mr. Trump had committed serious federal crimes said they still planned to support him in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Mr. DeSantis.Here are key findings from the recent polling:Most say a felony conviction should be disqualifying.In the Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of registered voters said Mr. Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And seven out of 10 voters said that anyone convicted of a felony should no longer be eligible to be president.Half of Americans, but only 20 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. This poll, which surveyed American adults, was the only one of the four surveys conducted entirely after Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia.When specifically asked by ABC about the Georgia case, 63 percent said the latest criminal charges against Mr. Trump were “serious.”Republicans, by and large, haven’t wavered.The trends were mixed for Mr. Trump, who is a voracious consumer of polls and often mentions them on social media and during campaign speeches. He has continually argued that the indictments were politically motivated and intended to short-circuit his candidacy.In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump trailed President Biden by a single percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. Mr. Biden’s advantage was 5 percentage points in July.At his campaign rallies, Mr. Trump has frequently boasted how the indictments have been a boon for his polling numbers — and that rang true when Republicans were surveyed about the primary race.In those polls that tracked the G.O.P. nominating contest, Mr. Trump widened his lead over his challengers, beating them by nearly 40 points. His nearest competitor, Mr. DeSantis, had fallen below 20 percent in both the Fox and Quinnipiac polls.Mr. DeSantis, who earlier this month replaced his campaign manager as he shifts his strategy, dropped by 6 to 7 percentage points in recent months in both polls.Trump participated in criminal conduct, Americans say.About half of Americans said that Mr. Trump’s interference in the election in Georgia was illegal, according to the AP/NORC poll.A similar share of Americans felt the same way after Mr. Trump’s indictments in the classified documents and the Jan. 6 cases, but the percentage was much lower when he was charged in New York in a case related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.Fewer than one in five Republicans said that Mr. Trump had committed a crime in Georgia or that he broke any laws in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.When asked by Fox News whether Mr. Trump had engaged in illegal activity to overturn the 2020 election, 53 percent of registered voters said yes.But just 13 percent of Republicans shared that view.A plurality of those surveyed by ABC (49 percent) believed that Mr. Trump should be charged with a crime in Georgia.Support for the Justice Department’s charges.Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults said that they approved of the Justice Department’s decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump for his attempts to reverse his electoral defeat in 2020, The A.P. found.At the same time, the public’s confidence in the Justice Department registered at 17 percent in the same poll. More

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      How Trump Uses Supporters’ Donations to Pay His Legal Bills

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      Facing a wide array of criminal charges, the former president is using money from small donors to defend himself legally — a practice that raises ethical questions.Former President Donald J. Trump faces a mountain of legal bills as he defends himself against a wide array of federal and state charges, with the latest coming this week in Georgia.To pay lawyers, he has often turned to money from supporters: Over the past two years, he has drawn tens of millions of dollars from a political action committee he controls called Save America PAC. Originally set up in 2020 as he galvanized supporters around his baseless claims of election fraud, the group — technically known as a leadership PAC — has been sustained in large part by contributions from small donors.Experts say the practice is most likely legal but that it raises ethical questions about how Mr. Trump treats his donors.Why is he doing this?Because Mr. Trump, who is famously tightfisted with his personal fortune, has mounting legal bills, a ready source of cash to cover them and not much standing in his way.Even before he entered the 2024 race, Save America was paying his legal bills as he faced federal and state investigations into his business practices, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.As charges have arrived, the legal bills have ballooned. Mr. Trump will have to pay lawyers in Florida, Georgia, New York, and Washington, D.C., as well as costs for things like databases for managing discovery.According to its public filings, Save America has also paid lawyers who are representing witnesses in the Trump investigations, including the congressional inquiry into the Capitol riot, raising questions about possible efforts to influence testimony.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, has said that the PAC is paying legal bills for witnesses to protect them from “financial ruin.” Mr. Cheung did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.In 2021 and 2022, Save America spent $16 million on legal bills, The New York Times has reported. In the first six months of this year, almost a third of the money raised by his committees and the super PAC backing him has gone toward legal costs — more than $27 million, according to a Times analysis of federal records.The legal payments could have tax implications, some experts said, if the underlying legal matter were deemed by the Internal Revenue Service to be related to Mr. Trump personally, rather than to his official role. The payments could, in theory, count as taxable income for Mr. Trump.But other experts said that the broad discretion of campaign finance laws would most likely shield him from any tax liability.Is it legal?Most likely, yes, although the rules governing what PACs and campaign committees can pay for are byzantine and not firmly settled.A campaign committee cannot pay for things that benefit a candidate personally, including legal bills that are unrelated to government matters.There is no such restriction on leadership PACs. While these organizations, which are controlled by the candidate, cannot spend money directly on the campaign, they can pay for legal fees.“Under prevailing F.E.C. interpretation, this whole discussion is moot,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former lawyer at the Federal Election Commission who is now the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group. “He can pay all the lawyers, for all the matters, and according to the F.E.C., these rules don’t even matter.”The more important question, Mr. Ghosh said, is: “Is that an abuse of donors?” Mr. Trump is raising money for one stated reason — his run for office — and apparently using some of it for another, his legal troubles, Mr. Ghosh said. “I think it sets a very bad precedent.”Save America’s fund-raising efforts have been a focus of one of the investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought indictments against Mr. Trump in Washington and Florida. Mr. Smith’s team has asked why Save America is paying some witnesses’ lawyers.Mr. Trump’s team is also setting up a legal-defense fund to help cover some of his allies’ legal fees, The Times reported last month. The fund is not expected to cover Mr. Trump’s own bills, but it could alleviate pressure on Save America.Do Trump’s donors and supporters care?Neither the indictments nor the reports about how he is paying for his legal expenses have dented his popularity in polls. Mr. Trump’s die-hard followers seem to have embraced his legal cause as their own, and he has used each indictment as an opportunity to solicit financial contributions.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a onetime Trump ally turned fierce critic who is now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has called attention to Mr. Trump’s use of donor money to cover his legal bills.Speaking this month on CNBC, Mr. Christie said: “And the fact is, when you look at just his campaign filings yesterday, almost most of the money that middle-class Americans have given to him, he spent on his own legal fees.”Mr. Christie continued, “I mean, this guy’s a billionaire.” How, exactly, does it work?Since Mr. Trump set up Save America after the 2020 election, it has been a war chest to sustain his political operation. It has brought in more than $100 million, but has also spent quickly, including on legal bills.In February 2022, the PAC said it had $122 million in cash on hand. By the beginning of this year, that number was down to $18 million, filings show. More than $16 million of the money spent went to legal bills — some for witnesses in the investigations, but mostly to firms representing Mr. Trump.A further $60 million was transferred in late 2022 to MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump.This year, Save America asked the super PAC for the money back, a sign of the committee’s growing need for cash.Most of the money that has gone to legal fees came from cash that Save America stockpiled between 2020 and 2022. But Save America is also receiving 10 percent of every dollar currently being donated to Mr. Trump.Here’s how it works: Mr. Trump now raises money primarily through the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, a type of group that allows candidates to divide contributions between their campaign and another committee.In November, when Mr. Trump began his campaign, 99 cents of every dollar raised into the committee went to his campaign committee, and 1 cent went to Save America. But as The Times reported in June, sometime this year the split changed: 90 percent of the money went to the campaign, while 10 percent went to Save America — 10 cents on every dollar raised went to the PAC that Mr. Trump has used to pay his legal bills. More

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      All of Trump’s Lawyers and How Much They’re Paid in Legal Fees

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      Donald Trump’s PACs have spent millions of dollars on a small army of lawyers to defend him in four separate federal and state criminal cases.Former President Donald J. Trump has become entangled in a web of federal and state prosecution, and now faces 91 criminal charges in four separate state and federal cases.Political action committees supporting him have spent more than $27 million on legal costs in the first six months of 2023, and he has recruited a small army of lawyers to defend him. Here are a dozen of the prominent figures and their bills paid by Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC.Lawyers Involved in Multiple CasesTodd Blanche, 49, founder of Blanche Law in New York CityFees: $353,000 paid to his firm from April to June 2023Todd Blanche was hired as one of former President Donald Trump’s many lawyers in April.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTodd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor with wide experience in white-collar cases, has a reputation as an aggressive but measured advocate. He represented Paul J. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman, in a Manhattan case involving charges of mortgage fraud and other state felonies, as well as Igor Fruman, a Soviet-born former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who pleaded guilty to soliciting foreign campaign contributions in 2021.Mr. Trump hired Mr. Blanche in April. His firm has been paid $353,000 for legal work by Save America, according to federal filings. Mr. Blanche is representing Mr. Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, the federal classified documents case and the federal election interference case.Boris Epshteyn, 41Fees: $195,000 paid in 2022Boris Epshteyn is thought to be one of six unnamed co-conspirators in the federal election interference case and has been enmeshed in other Trump investigations.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressBoris Epshteyn, a top adviser and longtime ally of Mr. Trump, serves as something of an in-house counsel, helping to coordinate the former president’s many lawyers. He was paid $195,000 by Mr. Trump’s PAC in 2022, though not specifically for legal consulting, and at least $30,000 by his 2024 campaign. He is thought to be one of six unnamed co-conspirators in the federal election interference case and has been enmeshed in other Trump investigations as a witness. He has been represented by Mr. Blanche, and had recommended adding Mr. Blanche to Mr. Trump’s legal team.Christopher M. Kise, 58, founder of Chris Kise & Associates in Tallahassee, Fla.Fees: $5.8 million in 2022 and the first six months of 2023Christopher M. Kise was hired to represent Mr. Trump in the federal documents case in the aftermath of the F.B.I. search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year.Marco Bello/ReutersChristopher M. Kise is a former Florida solicitor general who has won four cases before the United States Supreme Court and who worked as a transition adviser for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. He was hired to represent Mr. Trump in the federal documents case in the aftermath of the F.B.I. search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and he was paid an upfront retainer fee of $3 million, a figure that CNN reported had was much noticed by Mr. Trump’s other lawyers, as the former president has a long history of not paying his legal fees.Mr. Trump’s PAC paid Mr. Kise’s firm an additional $2.8 million since he was hired last year, and paid nearly $2.9 million in 2022 and 2023 to Continental, a law firm at which Mr. Kise is of counsel, according to federal filings. M. Evan Corcoran, 59, partner at Silverman Thompson in BaltimoreFees: $3.4 million in 2022 and the first half of 2023M. Evan Corcoran has become a key figure in the documents case. Jose Luis Magana/Associated PressM. Evan Corcoran quickly became a central figure in the documents case after he began representing Mr. Trump. A federal appeals court ordered Mr. Corcoran to hand over documents related to his legal work, records that eventually became crucial evidence for prosecutors in the case. Mr. Corcoran accompanied Mr. Trump for his arraignment this month in the election interference case. Mr. Corcoran’s firm has been paid a total of $3.4 million by Mr. Trump’s PAC in 2022 and the first six months of 2023.Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case in New YorkJoe Tacopina, 57, founder of Tacopina Seigel & DeOreo in New York CityFees: $1.7 million in the first half of 2023Joe Tacopina was a central figure in the civil case against Mr. Trump by E. Jean Carroll.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesOnce described as “to the defense bar what Donald Trump is to real estate,” Joe Tacopina’s custom of defending his clients vociferously and in public has helped him earn and maintain a seat of prominence on Mr. Trump’s legal team. He was a central figure in the civil case against Mr. Trump by E. Jean Carroll and aggressively questioned Ms. Carroll in an attempt to cast doubt on her allegations of sexual assault. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid Mr. Tacopina’s firm $1.7 million in the first half of 2023.Susan Necheles, 64, partner at NechelesLaw in New York CityFees: $465,000 in the first half of 2023Susan Necheles has been defending Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in a variety of investigations since 2021.Amr Alfiky/ReutersSusan R. Necheles was counsel to Venero Mangano, the late Genovese crime family underboss known as “Benny Eggs,” and recently represented Jeremy Reichberg, a former fundraiser for Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, in a federal bribery case. She has been defending Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in a variety of investigations since 2021. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid her firm $465,000 in the first six months of 2023.Federal Classified Documents CaseStephen Weiss, 35, counsel at Blanche Law in New York CityStephen Weiss worked as an associate at the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft for six years before joining Mr. Blanche in June at his firm. Mr. Weiss was present at a pretrial hearing for Mr. Trump in the documents case last month.Lindsey Halligan, 34Fees: $212,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023Lindsey Halligan was part of an effort by Mr. Trump’s legal team to have a special master appointed to review documents.Marco Bello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLindsey Halligan was part of an aggressive effort by Mr. Trump’s legal team last year to have a special master appointed to review documents the F.B.I. had seized in the raid on Mar-a-Lago. She was also part of a team of lawyers who met with Justice Department officials in June in a final effort to stave off charges in the documents case. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid her $212,000 from June 2022 to June 2023.Federal Election Interference CaseJohn Lauro, 65, principal of Lauro & Singer in New York City and Tampa, Fla.Fees: $288,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023John Lauro formally joined Mr. Trump’s legal team in the election interference case earlier this month, although he had earlier advised the former president on legal matters. He was paid $288,000 for his legal work in 2022 and the first six months of 2023 by Mr. Trump’s PAC. He accompanied the former president to his arraignment in the federal election interference case earlier this month.Mr. Lauro gained notoriety for representing Tim Donaghy, a former N.B.A. referee who pleaded guilty to betting on games and taking payoffs from gamblers. He also previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.Election Interference Case in GeorgiaDrew Findling, 63, founder of Findling Law Firm in AtlantaFees: $816,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023Drew Findling has represented an array of famous rap stars, including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressDrew Findling, a prolific figure in the world of Atlanta rap known as the #BillionDollarLawyer, joined Mr. Trump’s legal team a year ago. Mr. Findling has represented an array of famous rap stars — including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos — and is well regarded for his defense work, with decades of trial experience ranging from high-profile murder cases to local political corruption scandals in Georgia. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid his firm $816,000 from July 2022 to May 2023.Marissa Goldberg, 40, partner at Findling Law Firm in AtlantaMarissa Goldberg, a partner at Mr. Findling’s law firm, has worked alongside Mr. Findling and Ms. Little in an effort to quash the entire Georgia election case and to disqualify Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney leading the case.Jennifer Little, 44, founder of Jennifer Little Law in AtlantaFees: $100,000Jennifer Little began her career as a prosecutor in DeKalb County, Ga., before becoming a partner at the firm Fried Bonder White. She later started her own firm, Jennifer Little Law. Like Mr. Corcoran, Ms. Little was compelled to testify about her legal work representing Mr. Trump in the federal documents case. She was paid $100,000 by Mr. Trump’s PAC in April 2022.Kitty Bennett More