Im Andrea Mitchell in washington where a federal judge has set a trial date for one of the criminal cases facing donald trump, jack smiths Election Interference Case will begin March 4th Of Next year. That puts it smack in the middle of the 2024 political calendar, just a day before Super Tuesday. Judge chutkan telling the two sides at one point to take the temperature down, as things got really heated in court. The trump attorney arguing President Trump is entitled to a fair trial, this is a request for a speedy trial. Setting a trial date does not depend and should depend on a defendants personal and professional obligations, mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule. Joining me, justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian outside the d. C. Courthouse and former u. S. Attorney and law professor, joyce vance. Ken, a march 4th, 2024 trial date has been set. What does it mean for the two sides . Reporter i have to say, andrea
Courthouse and former u.s. attorney and law professor, joyce vance. ken, a march 4th, 2024 trial date has been set. what does it mean for the two sides? reporter: i have to say, andrea, more aggressive than many people believed. i was thinking maybe june, maybe in the summer. it s only two months distant from what the special counsel had proposed, which was january of 2024, and the judge said that was too aggressive. but she really didn t give the trump team much of anything, and they didn t help themselves at this hearing with some rather bombastic comments about the enormity of the case. she told them right away, look, april of 2026 was not happening, that was not reasonable in her view. it was way too far from the actual point of the alleged crimes, witnesses could lose their memories. she said, give me a reasonable timeframe that you need to process all the discovery in this case, and they just wouldn t do it. they wouldn t get off the april 2026 date that they were
Documents, they won t slow anything down, and to ken s point about the judge s comments about discovery and living in the electronic age, when you have 12.8 million documents, what you have is a situation that goes something like this: i email you and ken a transcript from the january 6th committee hearing. you email that, each of you, to five or six people, and they forward it on to people. all of that can come back in discovery, so there s this duplication. that s where computers come in. they rule out duplicates. then you can use word searches to narrow down to the documents that you need. and the government in this case has already vouched that they ve given the defense a roadmap to the documents that they ll be using at trial, giving them a real jump-start that defendants don t typically have. so this is six plus months to go to trial. that s very reasonable in one defendant case with only four
I m andrea mitchell in washington where a federal judge has set a trial date for one of the criminal cases facing donald trump, jack smith s election interference case will begin march 4th of next year. that puts it smack in the middle of the 2024 political calendar, just a day before super tuesday. judge chutkan telling the two sides at one point to take the temperature down, as things got really heated in court. the trump attorney arguing president trump is entitled to a fair trial, this is a request for a speedy trial. setting a trial date does not depend and should depend on a defendant s personal and professional obligations, mr. trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule. joining me, justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian outside the d.c.