Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has proposed March 4, 2024 as the date for former US President Donald Trump’s trial on charges of meddling in the election and falsifying state business records.
The March 2024 trial will take place in the middle of the Republican presidential primary that year. A day before “Super Tuesday,” when lawmakers from more than a dozen states and voters from Massachusetts and Maine to California and Texas will choose the next Republican nominee.
Trump’s lawyers have not commented on the trial date, despite the fact that Trump is the current favorite to win the Republican nomination.
Trump and 18 others were indicted by a grand jury in Fulton County on Tuesday on charges of trying to avenge Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.
The indictment was the second this month accusing Trump of trying to tamper with the results of the 2020 presidential election, making it the fourth criminal case against him.
Willis said in his filing that he chose the dates “in light of defendant Donald Trump’s other criminal and civil matters pending in the courts of our sister sovereigns.”
He said the timetable he proposed would not conflict with the previously scheduled hearings and trial dates of those other courts.
According to Willis, all suspects have already been given until noon on August 25 to turn themselves in to the Fulton County Jail. He also requested on Wednesday that the arraignment, or preliminary hearing, of the defendants be held the week of September 5.
In each of the four criminal charges pending against him, Trump has maintained his innocence.
His lawyer has requested that any trial be held after the November 2024 presidential election.
The former president faces multiple counts of falsifying company records in connection with an alleged hush money payment to an adult in New York in March. The judicial schedule of the former president is busy.
A federal lawsuit accusing him of illegally storing classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructing government efforts to recover them is also scheduled for trial in May. It was brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
Smith’s team is similarly pushing for a Jan. 2 trial date in the federal trial related to Trump’s efforts to rig the election.
Thursday is the deadline for Trump’s legal team to propose a trial date in the case.
Public opinion about Trump and the criminal charges against him is polarized along partisan lines among the majority of Americans, according to public opinion polls.
Before Georgia was indicted, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 53 percent of Americans approved of federal indictments against Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
