Trump seeks trial on election interference charges in 2026

Donald Trump says he’ll be ready to go on trial on federal charges over his bid to subvert the last election … in April 2026.

Citing extraordinary amounts of evidence — including a tranche of 11.5 million pages that prosecutors handed over earlier this month — Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche said in court papers filed Thursday that a 2.5-year delay before picking a jury would properly factor in the complexity of the case.

The proposal stands in almost absurd contrast to prosecutors’ call for a trial to begin on Jan. 2, 2024, a highly ambitious timeline. And it sets up a consequential choice for U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has indicated she will set a trial date by Aug. 28.

Trump’s proposal is almost certainly a non-starter. It would result in a trial six years after the events that formed the basis for the charges: Trump’s staggering and multi-faceted effort to subvert his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. But his lawyers framed the decision in stark terms, noting the unprecedented nature of a leading candidate for president being prosecuted by the Justice Department led by his political opponent.

Trump’s lawyers also pointed to typical lags in more routine criminal trials in Washington, D.C.’s federal court.

“In this District, ordinary order when faced with such overwhelming discovery is to set a reasonable trial schedule, commensurate with the size and scope of discovery and complexity of the legal issues,” Lauro and Blanche wrote. “The government rejects this sensible approach. Instead, it seeks a trial calendar more rapid than most no-document misdemeanors, requesting just four months from the beginning of discovery to jury selection.”

The attorneys also noted that the district typically prioritizes trials for defendants who are in pretrial detention, a factor that is not facing Trump.

Unsaid in the brief, however, is another significant calculus. Trump could, conceivably, be back in the White House in January 2025. If that happens and the case is still pending, he could instantly shut it down, either by issuing himself a presidential pardon or by appointing an attorney general who would agree to dismiss the charges.

Special counsel Jack Smith has charged Trump with three conspiracies aimed at derailing the transfer of power to Joe Biden, in part through a campaign of disinformation aimed at disrupting state government and congressional efforts to certify the 2020 election.

In their court filing Thursday, Trump’s team also continued to push the notion that prosecutors have had 2.5 years to investigate the case, while Trump is only just beginning to prepare his defense. An April 2026 trial date would give Trump’s team an equal amount of time to prepare, they said.

But that notion is erroneous, prosecutors said in their own proposed trial schedule brief last week. They noted that Trump is privy to large swaths of evidence arrayed against him as a result of the House Jan. 6 select committee’s hearings and trove of public documents. And he also has access to millions of pages of records that overlap with the materials the government is producing to him — such as documents from his White House, his campaign and his PAC.

Chutkan has given no hints about the timetable she’s considering, but she has warned that she would speed up the timeline if Trump continues to make “inflammatory” remarks about witnesses and parties to the case that could influence the jury pool. She is also unlikely to be swayed by Trump’s claims of political malfeasance by prosecutors: During her first hearing in the case, she repeatedly emphasized that she won’t be factoring in Trump’s political candidacy or the politics of the matter at all in her trial decisions.

Prosecutors contended that despite the large volume of evidence they plan to share, they had meticulously organized it in a way that should speed Trump’s review. And they argued that the fact patterns in the case were not so complex that they would require the kind of extraordinary lag that Trump’s team claims is necessary.

But Lauro and Blanche said prosecutors were vastly underestimating the complicated issues at play. And that’s before factoring in Trump’s crowded calendar of criminal and civil matters already clogging the calendar in the early months of 2024. The attorneys attached the confirmed and proposed trial schedules in Trump’s criminal matters in New York, where Trump is expected to face a state jury in March, and in Florida, where Trump is expected to face a federal jury in May.

Trump is also facing newly issued racketeering and conspiracy charges in Fulton County, Ga., where prosecutors have asked for a March 4 trial date.

“The public interest lies in justice and fair trial, not a rush to judgment,” Trump’s lawyers argued. “Moreover, if the rights to due process and counsel are to mean anything, a defendant must have adequate time to defend himself.”