Fulton County prosecutors revealed Wednesday that former President Donald Trump’s election interference trial in Georgia will last an estimated four months, not including jury selection, with some 150 witnesses called to testify.
The update came during a public hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, where prosecutors and lawyers for the 19 defendants hashed out their arguments for and against trying the group all together.
In August, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis used Georgia state racketeering law to charge Trump and his allies with scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. The case has added to Trump’s already significant legal problems, as he is facing federal criminal charges in two other cases — for alleged election interference and mishandling of classified documents — along with state-level charges in New York.
The Georgia case is unique in how public the process has been: Wednesday’s hearing was livestreamed on the judge’s YouTube page, and it is also the first case in which Trump was made to have his mug shot taken.
Setting the case apart further are the sheer number of defendants, with contrasting defense strategies, although all have pleaded not guilty. It is not clear where the county might find a big enough venue to hold such a trial.
Two defendants, attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have requested a speedy trial, meaning they would need to begin by early November.
Currently, McAfee has the pair’s trial set to begin Oct. 23; he denied Chesebro’s motion to separate his case from Powell’s on Wednesday. The rest of the group is scheduled to be tried beginning March 4.
Prosecutors, however, would prefer the group be tried together. A trial for only Chesebro and Powell would still require four months, they said, arguing it would be an inefficient use of government resources.
At the hearing, Fulton County prosecutor Will Wooten confronted arguments from some of the defendants that they should be separated from the pack because their alleged roles in the conspiracy differed from others’. Courts have already decided that in conspiracy cases, the government does not have to show that each member of the alleged scheme had the same knowledge as every other member, Wooten said.
A few defendants, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, are fighting to move their cases to federal court by arguing that the actions under question were taken as part of their official roles in the federal government.
The petitions to move to federal court presented a particularly thorny issue, as Wooten and McAfee said those proceedings could take as long as six months, possibly preventing a state jury from rendering a verdict in the meantime.
McAfee said that he aimed to set a more firm schedule by next week.
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