Trump federal trial on election interference set for March 4

Former president’s trial will start a day before Super Tuesday, when voters in 14 states will cast their primary ballots for the presidential election.

Donald Trump’s trial on federal charges of election interference has been set for one day before Super Tuesday. Picture: AFP.

Former President Donald Trump’s federal trial on charges that he conspired to overturn his 2020 election loss will start March 4, 2024, a judge said Monday, one day before Super Tuesday, when voters in 14 states will cast their primary ballots for the next presidential election.

“My primary concern here is the interest of justice and that I’ve balanced the defendant’s right to adequately prepare” with the need for an efficient trial, said US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who made the ruling at a hearing in Washington.

Mr Trump reacted angrily to the March 4 date, complaining that the timing amounted to “Election Interference.”

Mr Trump posted that prosecutors had deliberately slow-walked their investigation “to bring it smack in the middle of Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent’s campaign against him. Election Interference!”

Ms Chutkan refused a request from Mr Trump, the current frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, to push off his trial until April 2026, saying defence attorneys didn’t need two years to examine the extensive evidence in the case. But she also said prosecutors’ request for a Jan. 2, 2024, start date – two weeks before the first Republican primary votes will be cast in Iowa’s Jan. 15 caucuses – didn’t give defence attorneys enough time to prepare.

Mr Trump can’t appeal the trial date, but he can seek to delay it through pre-trial motions, which his lawyers have signalled they intend to do.

Ms Chutkan said she considered the timing of the case against three other state and federal trials of Mr Trump that will likely start within weeks or months of each other, straining his defence team and ensuring Mr Trump will spend much of the 2024 primary campaign mired in court fights.

March 4 is also the date Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis initially proposed for Mr Trump’s trial on similar election-interference charges, setting up a possible collision course for federal and local prosecutors as they seek to convict the former president relying on many of the same witnesses and much of the same evidence.

Willis has said she would be prepared to try the case in October, as two of the 19 defendants have requested. Mr Trump’s lawyers have said they oppose an October trial.

A federal court in Georgia Monday was considering a request from one Mr Trump co-defendant, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, to move that trial to federal court, a motion Mr Trump is likely to make as well, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr Meadows told the court he was acting in line with his duties as Mr Trump’s White House chief of staff when he set up meetings and called Georgia officials asking about alleged election fraud in the state after Trump’s 2020 loss.

In a surprise move, Meadows took the witness stand within the first few minutes of the hearing. Under questioning from his lawyer, Meadows said his actions after the 2020 election were made within his official White House duties.

At one point, Meadows said he didn’t want to reveal any classified information during his testimony. “I’m in enough trouble as it is,” he quipped, drawing chuckles from the packed courtroom gallery.

Mr Trump has a March 25, 2024, trial date on New York state charges related to his alleged role in paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels. The judge in that case, Juan Merchan, spoke to Ms Chutkan on Thursday about their upcoming trials, a spokesman for the New York court said, but didn’t elaborate.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors are set to try Mr Trump on May 20, 2024, in Fort Pierce, Fla. on separate federal charges that he mishandled classified information after he left the White House.

In the case before Ms Chutkan, Smith on Aug. 1 charged Mr Trump with four crimes, including conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring against the rights of voters. The indictment points to actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Mr Trump’s supporters. Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing and accused prosecutors of pursuing him to undermine his bid to return to the White House.

On Super Tuesday, or March 5, primary voters in 14 states – including California, North Carolina, and Virginia – will help select their party’s nominee for the general election. Among those states, 200 Electoral College votes are up for grabs.

Mr Trump’s lawyers sought to push the federal trial in Washington to April 2026, citing the large volume of evidence they will have to examine and the historic nature of the case. Mr Trump is the first president in American history accused of blocking the peaceful transfer of power to his successor, a situation his lawyers called “terra incognita.”

“Never in the history of the United States have we seen a case of this magnitude go to trial in four months, and this man’s liberty and life is at stake,” Mr Trump’s attorney John Lauro said Monday.

“He deserves an adequate representation. He’s no different than any American.”

One of Smith’s prosecutors, Molly Gaston, acknowledged that the discovery evidence so far amounts to 12.8 million pages, but said most of it had already been turned over to or previously reviewed by the defence. At least 25% of those pages are associated with Mr Trump’s campaign and political-action committee, more than three million came from the U.S. Secret Service, and hundreds of thousands came from publicly available litigation, Gaston said.

Grand jury transcripts, exhibits, notes and reports from interviews amount to about 58,000 pages, she said. Prosecutors have assembled about 47,000 pages of “key documents” for the defence team, including evidence they thought Mr Trump’s lawyers would find favourable.

“It’s essentially a road map to our case,” she said, adding later that the goal is to find the “balance of the defendant’s right and need to prepare for a fair trial and on the other hand the public’s exceedingly and unprecedentedly strong interest in a speedy trial here.” Lauro, raising his voice, said prosecutors had requested “a show trial, not a speedy trial.” The hearing underscored the complexities and challenges that lie ahead both for Mr Trump and for prosecutors as they work to untangle what they both acknowledge are unprecedented legal issues the case presents.

Lauro said he would be seeking to have counts dismissed on a number of grounds, including that Mr Trump is protected from prosecution for actions he took in the course of his presidency. He signalled that Mr Trump’s team might seek to have the case moved from Washington, where the former president has long contended the jury pool is mostly Democrat and biased against him.

Lauro also said he was prepared to argue in formal court filings that the criminal charges were brought by Biden administration officials in retaliation for Mr Trump’s frequent criticism of President Biden and his son, Hunter, who is also facing criminal charges by the Justice Department.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith shortly after Mr Trump announced his candidacy in November, in an effort to isolate prosecutors’ investigations from the purview of Biden appointees.

That hasn’t persuaded Mr Trump and his allies. Smith’s prosecutors will have to address their criticism as they seek to avoid the perception that their case is too closely aligned with that of Willis in Atlanta, which involves some of the same themes, witnesses and facts.

Up to this point, prosecutors in the two jurisdictions have been proceeding on independent tracks, communicating minimally, if at all, people familiar with the matter said. As the trials approach, Smith’s team will likely request information from Willis so as to prevent even minor discrepancies in witness testimony from being exploited by the defence.

Some communication among federal prosecutors and elected district attorneys who have similar cases is normally routine and expected. But Smith’s team risks appearing partisan if he works too closely with Willis, an elected Democrat, on a case against the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

“It’s like a to-co-ordinate-or-not-to-co-ordinate dilemma for him,” said Brandon Fox, a former federal prosecutor.

House Republicans, led by Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, have already begun investigating Willis and whether she co-ordinated with Biden administration officials and are threatening to withhold federal money her office receives.

Willis has said she is operating independently and that she and Smith probably wouldn’t recognise each other in a room.

Dow Jones