Trump Georgia election case: Judge 'very skeptical' of trying all defendants together

A judge in Georgia on Wednesday (September 6) said that he was “very sceptical” about former US president Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants going through a trial together next month in a criminal case in which they stand accused of conspiring to reverse the presidential election results in 2020.

The prosecutors were granted 10 days by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to explain how they “could possibly keep these defendants together” with a number of outstanding legal questions and the deadline of speedy trial set next month for defendants who have asked for one.

The remarks that were made during a hearing of the case in Atlanta emphasised the challenge of shepherding multiple people to trial as soon as October 23.

Trial likely to stretch for four months

The prosecutors in the Georgia racketeering case said that the trial is likely to take four months and will include approximately 150 witnesses.

"So the other things to keep in mind is this is going to be a case with a lot of pretrial motions. And again, I don't know how many hearings we're going to need to have to sort through all of those. But if we compress our timeline to 40-something days, our ability to even be able to really weigh those and think through these issues again, it just seems a bit unrealistic to think that we can handle all 19 in 40-something days. That's that's my initial reaction,” agreed Judge McAfee.

No date has been set for the trial yet, although prosecutors have been hoping to start on October 23. Any wrongdoing has been denied by the former president and his co-defendants, who have pleaded not guilty.

State prosecutor Nathan Wade said in court on Wednesday that the estimated timeline has not included jury selection which is likely to add months to the process.

Judge Scott McAfee said that he plans to finalise questions regarding the schedule of the trial by "either the end of this week or early next week". In the case, all 19 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty and appealed for their right to in-person arraignments.

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During the court session on Wednesday, Judge McAfee also heard arguments on whether there is a possibility of a few defendants severing their cases from the wider racketeering.

Attorneys for Kenneth Chesebro looked for ways to decrease the counts against him, as did attorneys for former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who has appealed for a speedy trial. The two will now go on trial together on October 23 after a motion to sever their cases from one another was denied by Judge McAfee.

The judge, in the court, said that he does not believe that "the severance for Mr Cheseboro or Ms Powell is necessary to achieve a fair determination of the guilt or innocence for either defendant in this case".

(With inputs from agencies)

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