Willis requests March 4 trial date
Seeking arraignments in case week of Sept. 5
The prosecutor in Atlanta who obtained an indictment this week against former President Donald Trump and 18 others wants to take the case to trial in March.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in a proposed scheduling order filed with the court Wednesday that she wants the trial to start on March 4.
That would have the trial starting a day before Super Tuesday, when the most delegates are at stake in the primary contest to decide the next Republican presidential nominee. Roughly 14 primaries are set to be held across the country, from California and Texas to Massachusetts and Maine. Trump is currently his party’s dominant frontrunner.
Trump and 18 others were indicted Monday by a Fulton County grand jury. They are accused of committing various crimes as part of a scheme to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
John Bazemore
Willis is also proposing that arraignments for the defendants happen the week of Sept. 5. She had already set a deadline of noon Aug. 25 for all the defendants to turn themselves in at the Fulton County
Jail to be booked.
That would seem to suggest that Trump and the others could be making two trips to Georgia in the coming weeks, first to surrender and then later for an arraignment.
The relatively tight calendar Willis is proposing could be complicated by pretrial maneuvering by the defendants.
Already on Tuesday, lawyers for former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows filed a quick motion to transfer the case from state to federal court.