Lawyers for former US President Donald Trump on Thursday asked a federal judge in Washington to schedule an April 2026 trial in the federal case in which he is charged of seeking to overturn his 2020 election loss, Reuters reported.
That requested date would place the trial after the November 2024 US election, in which Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith’s team last week asked the judge to set a January 2, 2024 trial date.
That date is just two weeks before the first votes are cast in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
"The public interest lies in justice and fair trial, not a rush to judgment," Trump's attorneys wrote on Thursday, according to Reuters.
Trump was indicted with four felonies related to efforts overturn the results of the 2020 election: A conspiracy to defraud the United States "by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to obstruct the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election"; a conspiracy to impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified; a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have that vote counted; obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct and impede, the certification of the electoral vote.
The former President appeared at Washington’s federal courthouse last Thursday, where he pleaded not guilty.
Earlier this week, Trump was indicted in a separate case in the state of Georgia in which he and 18 other defendants are charged with trying to overturn the results of the election in that state.
The Fulton County grand jury indictment followed a two-year investigation ignited by a January 2021 phone call in which Trump was heard asking Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to help him “find 11,780 votes” needed to reverse his narrow loss to Joe Biden.