Georgia prosecutors expect a four-month trial and 150 witnesses in Trump’s election interference case

Georgia prosecutors estimate a four-month trial with more than 150 witnesses for 19 defendants in a sweeping racketeering indictment targeting an alleged criminal enterprise to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results.

Prosecutors previously got a glimpse of the courtroom arguments made against Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants during the first-ever televised trial related to the case on September 6.

Fulton County prosecutors rejected arguments by attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, who sought a separate trial on charges under the state’s RICO statute, charging them with 40 separate felonies and 161 separate counts of conspiracy to kill the alleged criminal. purpose of unlawfully rejecting the election results.

Supreme Court Justice Scott McAfee rejected efforts by Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell to separate their cases, ordering that they both face a joint trial. Jury selection will begin on October 23.

However, Judge McAfee seemed skeptical about prosecutors’ timeline and attempts to try all 19 defendants together, suggesting that trying all defendants at once would be “unrealistic” and could take twice as long as prosecutors estimate.

Prosecutor Nathan Wade said that four-month timeline does not include jury selection.

For comparison, in 2014, Ms. Willis served as lead prosecutor in a similarly wide-ranging RICO case involving corruption in the Atlanta public school system. Eleven of the 12 defendants were convicted in April 2015, about seven months after the trial began. One of the defendants died before the trial ended.

Chesebro and Ms. Powell had called for an earlier trial, which Mr. Trump vehemently opposed.

Last month, Trump’s lawyers argued that two months to prepare a legal defense “would violate President Trump’s federal and state constitutional rights to a fair trial and due process.”

He also filed a motion for a separate trial. It’s the same with former Trump-linked lawyer John Eastman, whose lawyers argued in a lawsuit filed on September 5 that the schedule “does not provide sufficient time to prepare for trial.”

On Wednesday, lawyers for Chesebro, one of the main architects of the allegedly fraudulent scheme to turn out Trump loyalists as presidential electors in a state won by Joe Biden, and Ms. Powell, who is accused of masterminding the attempt to illegally hack into voting machines, said the charges against them the charges have nothing to do with dozens of other acts related to the case.

Attorneys argued that their clients would be unfairly occupied with hours, days or weeks of testifying and presenting evidence about crimes with which they had nothing to do. Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell and all of the other 17 defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty.

Brian Rafferty, Ms. Powell’s lawyer, said his efforts to defend her for her alleged actions using only voting machines in Coffee County will be “undermined” as prosecutors and other lawyers present complex legal arguments and testimony about the certification of the electoral colleges and other elements of the case .

“All of this will be detrimental to my client,” he said.

Fulton County prosecutors, however, argued that all evidence in the case was admissible against all defendants due to the nature of the alleged criminal conspiracy.

Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Will Wooten argued that their involvement in the incidents showed that a criminal enterprise “existed and “that the enterprise was operating.”

“Whenever someone joins a conspiracy, he is responsible for all the actions of all his co-conspirators and that’s it. Evidence against one is evidence against all,” he said.