How Trump and his allies are now trying to create 'chaos' in Georgia prosecution

05 September 2023

With Donald Trump facing four criminal indictments, the former president's legal team has been trying to delay his trials. Trump's attorneys requested a 2026 trial in special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — a request Smith has aggressively pushed back against.

But two of Trump's co-defendants in Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' 2020 election case, attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, have a different request, according to the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery: a "high-speed trial" in October.

Pagliery, in a report published on September 5, explains that if Judge Scott McAfee grants Powell and Chesebro's requests, the "alleged coup plotters" will "have the upper hand — for now."

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Defense attorney David Oscar Markus told the Beast, "I think it's a win-win for the defendants. The ones going quickly will have the benefit of the state not being fully ready. The state has to prove the case. And the other defendants will get a free preview."

Pagliery stresses that Trump and his allies will "be closely watching whatever transpires during an early showdown in Fulton County courts." And Trump's legal team, according to Pagliery, "will be taking notes on the tactics displayed in the courtroom" in earlier trials.

Markus told the Beast, "The state won't want to show all their cards, so they may hold some stuff back. In fact, sometimes the state dismisses (a case) against a smaller defendant rather than show its cards for the big target. Now, I don't think that will happen here because it would be too embarrassing. Typically, the defense loves chaos. Prosecutors hate it."

Ronald Carlson, a University of Georgia law professor, told the Beast, "Prosecutors would very likely like to hold some cards back, but they won't want to run the risk of bad optics. You don't want to start it out with headlines that say, 'Chesebro and Powell Acquitted.' That will send a bad message."

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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