Trump gets March 4 trial date in federal case over efforts to overturn 2020 election

WASHINGTON —  Former President Trump will face trial on March 4, 2024, for four felony charges related to his alleged efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election.

That means jury selection would begin a day before Super Tuesday on March 5, when California, Texas and a dozen other states hold their presidential primaries.

Politics

Trump indicted over efforts to overturn the 2020 election

The indictment alleges that Trump pursued discounting legitimate votes and subverting the 2020 presidential election results through three criminal conspiracies.

Aug. 1, 2023

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said her decision could not take into consideration the former president’s other responsibilities. Trump is again seeking the Republican nomination in 2024, and has called the criminal charges he faces an attempt to interfere with his chance to win the election.

“Setting a trial date does not depend and should not depend on a person’s personal and professional obligations,” Chutkan said. “Mr. Trump, like any other defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule.”

Trump’s attorney John Lauro said the defense would abide by the trial date, but wanted to note for the record that he believed the date would deny Trump’s right to effective representation.

Chutkan responded by saying that the grand jury convened in September 2022 and the trial date gives Trump’s defense seven months to prepare.

In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump said he would appeal the trial date and called Chutkan “a biased, Trump Hating Judge.”

Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with engaging in conspiracies to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to stay in power despite having lost to Joe Biden. The charges are conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights, and obstruction of or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty.

Smith, who was in the front row of the courtroom Monday, had requested a Jan. 2, 2024, trial start date, arguing there is public interest in seeing the case resolved before the election. Smith said in a court filing that his team would need four to six weeks to present its case at trial.

Lauro asked the court in a filing for an April 2026 trial date, citing the amount of evidence he has received from the government. He said the prosecution would also need four to six weeks to present a defense.

“These proposals are very far apart and... neither are acceptable,” Chutkan said before announcing the trial date.

His voice raised, Lauro said the suggestion that he could be ready by Smith’s original Jan. 2 requested date “is an outrage — an outrage to justice.”

Lauro repeatedly became animated despite Chutkan’s instructing him twice to “take the temperature down.”

“This man’s liberty and life is a stake!” Lauro shouted at one point in the hearing.

Chutkan, a former trial attorney, pushed back on Lauro’s argument that reviewing the evidence is an “overwhelming task” for the defense, saying that Trump has known he was under investigation for a year and that his legal counsel had to review documents, such as items from the National Archives, before they were handed over to prosecutors.

“You’ve known this was coming, Mr. Trump’s counsel has known this was coming,” Chutkan said, adding that his indictment should not have been a surprise.

Chutkan instructed prosecutors to describe in court how evidence already turned over during the discovery process was organized and placed into a searchable database.

Much of the millions of pages of evidence provided by the special counsel is duplicative, or already in the public domain, such as materials used by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said prosecutor Molly Gulland Gaston. For example, the same exhibit might appear in grand jury testimony in addition to when it was presented to a witness.

Among the 47,000 “key documents” provided to the Trump team is an annotated version of the indictment, which she called “essentially a road map to our case.”

Chutkan dismissed Lauro’s argument that the defense would have to review millions of pages by hand.

“Discovery in 2023 is not sitting in a warehouse with boxes of paper looking at every single page,” she said, adding that most criminal prosecutions start reviewing evidence using keyword searches in databases.

Chutkan said the well-organized discovery that Trump’s team has received is far more complete and detailed than what most defendants receive from the government, showing that the special counsel has done his due diligence.

Lauro said the lengthy time to prepare is needed because of the complex legal issues that will be raised.

“This is one of the most unique cases brought in terms of legal issues in the history of the United States, ever,” Lauro said.

Lauro said the defense expects to file motions related to executive immunity, along with a selective prosecution motion accusing the Justice Department of bringing the case to influence the 2024 campaign and as retribution for attacking Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Gaston argued that the issues Lauro raised have already been well litigated. She said that public comments by Trump and Lauro in recent weeks discount the claims of needing years to prepare, including Lauro’s recent comments on television about his preparations and strategy, and Trump’s claims of a 2020 election report that he threatened to publish last week before being arrested in a related state-level case in Fulton County, Ga.

Gaston also said that Trump had already litigated executive privilege issues related to testimony of 14 witnesses in five sealed proceedings between August 2022 and March 2023, confirming reports for the first time with the permission of the chief judge of the court.

Gaston said a speedy trial is particularly urgent because Trump posts on social media about the case almost daily, attacking witnesses, the court and Washington, D.C., itself, which she said could taint the jury pool.

The March 4 date complicates Trump’s already full calendar, which, along with events for the 2024 GOP presidential primary, includes several civil and criminal cases before summer 2024.

Chutkan said she had already warned the judge in Trump’s New York City criminal case that she was considering a date that would interfere with the March 25 start date of his trial over an alleged hush-money payment made to a porn actor in the final days of the 2016 campaign.