(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on August 5, 2023 shows special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, DC, on August 1, 2023 and former US President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 8, 2022.
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Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday proposed a Jan. 2 start date for former President Donald Trump’s trial on criminal charges related to attempting to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Smith in a filing in Washington, D.C., federal court argued that that trial date would “vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial.”
That interest is “of particular significance” in a case involving an ex-president accused of conspiring to subvert a democratic election and “discount citizens’ legitimate votes,” Smith wrote in the eight-page filing.
The prosecutor estimated that his case would take no longer than four to six weeks to present to jurors.
The filing also said that the special counsel expects to have “substantially completed” the production of evidence to be turned over to Trump by Aug. 28, when the parties are set to meet for a status conference. Smith suggested in another filing that a trial date will be set on that day.
Trump’s lawyers are due to suggest their own trial date next week.
But Trump himself lashed out at Smith’s proposed schedule, which he argued is designed to harm his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“Deranged Jack Smith has just asked for a trial on the Biden Indictment to take place on January 2nd., just ahead of the important Iowa Caucuses,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.
“Only an out of touch lunatic would ask for such a date, ONE DAY into the New Year, and maximum Election Interference with IOWA!” Trump wrote. “Such a trial, which should never take place due to my First Amendment Rights, and massive BIDEN CORRUPTION, should only happen, if at all, AFTER THE ELECTION. The same with other Fake Biden Indictments. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”
The proposed timeline would start the D.C. trial nearly five months before jury selection begins in Trump’s other federal case in Miami, which centers on his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases.
His legal team previously proposed that the Florida case should not head to trial before the November 2024 presidential election, where Trump hopes to compete as the Republican nominee.
The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 15.
That same day, Trump is scheduled to stand trial in Manhattan federal court for a civil lawsuit filed by the writer E. Jean Carroll. In that case, Trump is accused of defaming Carroll in statements he made during and after his presidency denying her allegation that he raped her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.
Trump did not appear in court in the recent trial for a similar lawsuit also brought by Carroll. In that case, a civil jury awarded her $5 million after finding that Trump sexually abused her, and had defamed her in statements made last fall.
Smith said in Thursday’s filing that despite suggestions by Trump’s lawyers that the federal Speedy Trial Act is only intended to protect a defendant’s rights, both that law and the U.S. Constitution vests the right to a quick trial “in the public, not just the defendant.”
“The Government is prepared at this moment to produce to the defendant the majority of discovery in this case, including materials that exceed its obligations,” the filing said.
That material includes grand jury transcripts, witness interviews, evidence obtained through search warrants and documents from the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Smith said.
“The Government’s proposed trial date represents an appropriate balance of the defendant’s
right to prepare a defense and the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial in the case,” he wrote.