Trump’s 'ludicrous' and 'absurd' trial date request only hurts his case: former federal prosecutors

21 August 2023

On Thursday evening, August 17, attorneys for Donald Trump made an audacious move when they asked District Judge Tanya Chutkan to move the trial date in his federal 2020 election case to 2026. And the request has been drawing a great deal of criticism from legal experts.

Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results are the focus of two separate criminal prosecutions: one by special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the other by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for the State of Georgia. Smith and Willis both allege that Trump committed criminal acts when he lost the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden but tried to stay in office regardless.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on August 21, former federal prosecutors Frederick Baron and Dennis Aftergut emphasize that Trump didn't do himself any favor with the 2026 request.

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"Trump's proposal on the all-important trial date sends an unintended message: that Trump is pressing his lawyers to take legal positions so extreme that they will be entirely disregarded," Baron and Aftergut explain. "Credibility with judges is the coin of the realm for trial lawyers. Squander it early, and it's hard to retrieve."

The former federal prosecutors add, "Trump's past pattern is that his lawyers lose credibility by kowtowing to his absurd, uninformed demands. Then, he tosses them like bad pennies. Sooner or later, it's tough attracting the gold standard in the legal profession. The Trump team's tissue-thin pretext for their ludicrous trial date request was the volume of discovery materials they need to read."

On August 17, Neal Katyal — former acting solicitor general in the Obama Administration and a frequent guest on MSNBC — tweeted, "I'll eat my hat if Judge Chutkan agrees with Trump to start this trial in 2026. Absurd."

Baron and Aftergut note that Katyal isn't the only legal expert who has been highly critical of the 2026 request. Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance, another frequent MSNBC guest, has also criticized the move as over-the-top.

Baron and Aftergut explain, "An experienced judge like Chutkan has seen many teams of lawyers prepare competently for trial in more legally and factually complex cases involving databases larger than in Trump's case — and do it in far less time than Trump has requested…. Trump's laughable 2026 trial date proposal will lose Judge Chutkan's trust for his lawyers faster than a bullet fired at someone standing in the middle of 5th Avenue…. Almost certainly, Judge Chutkan will set a trial date before the November 2024 election and make every effort to stick to it."

The former federal prosecutors add, "In one of the most important trials in American history, she will not want justice delayed until after voters have made their decisions in a crucial presidential election."

Frederick Baron and Dennis Aftergut's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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