Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis has proposed that the trial in the 2020 election case against former president Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants begin on March 4, 2024.
Willis has also requested that the defendants be arraigned the week of September 5.
The 19 defendants were indicted by Georgia grand jury earlier this week in connection with their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential-election results in the Peach State.
Trump is facing 13 felony charges, including conspiracy to commit forgery, filing false documents, Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer, and violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Other defendants named in the 98-page indictment, which was unsealed on Monday evening, include former White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several members of Trump’s former legal team: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell.
Additional Trump allies charged in connection with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’s investigation include pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, Trump campaign official Mike Roman, lawyer Robert Cheeley, former Georgia GOP chair and fake elector David Shafer, fake elector Shawn Still, pastor Stephen Lee, Black Voices for Trump leader Harrison Floyd, publicist Trevian Kutti, lawyer Ray Smith, and three officials connected to the Coffee County voting-systems breach: Cathy Latham, Scott Hall and Misty Hampton.
Trump is set to have a busy year as he navigates running for president while also being a criminal defendant in four different cases.
Early 2024, which would be a busy time for any presidential candidate, will be doubly full for Trump.
Prosecutors in the special counsel’s 2020 election case against Trump have proposed a trial start date of January 2. Trump will also face another defamation lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll beginning on January 15 — the day of the Iowa Caucus. Since it’s a civil proceeding, though, Trump won’t be required to attend the trial in-person. He didn’t show up to court the last time Carroll sued him — a suit in which she prevailed, only for Trump to mock her and repeat his defamatory statements about the alleged sexual assault, leading her to file another suit.
If Willis’s proposed trial date comes to fruition, the Georgia trial will begin just one day before Super Tuesday. Trump’s Manhattan hush-money trial is set to begin weeks later, on March 25, though Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has said he’d be open to postponing the trial.
The trial in the special counsel’s classified-documents case against Trump is set to begin two months later, on May 20, one day before the Kentucky and Oregon primaries.
Trump’s legal team will likely attempt to block efforts to try the former president before the November 2024 election by arguing that an upcoming election would hopelessly bias the jury, as they have in the classified-documents case.
Trump now faces 91 charges across four cases: 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush-money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels; 42 felony counts as a result of Smith’s investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents; four felony counts in the special counsel’s January 6 case; and 13 felony charges in the Georgia election case.