Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney in Georgia, wants the trial of former President Donald Trump and 18 of his friends in her RICO case to start about a week before the state’s primary.
In a statement made on Wednesday, Willis’s team asked the judge in charge to think about a scheduling order in which the suspects would be arraigned the week of September 5 and the trial would start on March 4, 2024.
The suggested date for the hearing to begin is important because it is one day before Super Tuesday and eight days before Georgia’s primary, which is set for March 12. Right now, Trump is in the lead for the Republican nomination for president.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is unlikely to decide on the suggested scheduling order until he hears from the accused.
In the filing for Willis’s team, special prosecutor Nathan Wade wrote that their suggested dates “do not conflict” with already-scheduled hearings and trial times in other cases, naming Trump directly. The filing also suggests other times for discovery and other things that need to be done before the hearing.
The hearing for Alvin Bragg’s hush-money case, which he brought to court in Manhattan, is set for March 25. The papers case against Trump that will be brought by special counsel Jack Smith will start on May 20 in Florida. And in a federal case about the 2020 election, Smith wants the hearing to start in Washington, D.C., on January 2.
Trump is also facing a fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which is set to go to trial in October, and a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who says the former president raped her, which is set to go to trial in mid-January.
In most of the court cases, Trump has said he did nothing wrong. Concerning the four criminal cases, he has said that the Biden administration and Democratic attorneys in New York and Georgia are leading a “witch hunt” against him.
In the Georgia case, Trump and 18 other people were charged this week with trying to change the results of the last presidential election in the state. Willis said at a press meeting on Monday that she would give people with arrest warrants “the chance” to turn themselves in by noon on Friday, August 25.
Trump said in a post to Truth Social on Tuesday that he plans to show fraud in Georgia’s 2020 election at a press meeting next week. This will hurt the case against him and his other co-defendants, which is being led by Willis.
