Trump’s Attorneys Seek to Postpone Jack Smith’s Proposed Trial Date in DC Election Case Until April 2026

Donald Trump’s legal team cried foul on Thursday about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ambitious plan to start a criminal trial about the former president's efforts to overturn the election on Jan. 2, 2024, just four days shy of the third anniversary of the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

Their proposed alternative: April, 2026.

"The public interest lies in justice and fair trial, not a rush to judgment," Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro wrote in their 16-page legal brief filed on Thursday that spells out their reasons for why Trump's Washington, D.C., trial shouldn't happen before the next presidential election and instead would make more sense if it came in the middle of the 2026 mid-term election cycle.

Trump’s attorneys have sought in multiple jurisdictions around the country to delay the former president’s criminal trials until after the 2024 election, but judges across the Eastern Seaboard have rejected every adjudicated request to date. 

In urging U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to buck this trend, the former president's attorneys pointed to the “enormity” of discovery evidence it's already reviewing from Smith's prosecutors, including 11.5 million pages of documents that include interview transcripts and other relevant files.

"To put 11.5 million pages in some perspective, we began downloading the government’s initial production on August 13, 2023. Two days later, it was still downloading," the former president's attorneys wrote.

Trump's team in its motion proposes no significant court action until December, when it recommends the defense team and prosecutors would next convene with Chutkan to discuss discovery production and debate any pending motions. The former president's team recommends Chutkan then schedule sporadic check-ins throughout 2024 and 2025 before convening in March of 2026 for a final pretrial conference before holding jury selection and a trial during the following month.

"This more reasonable schedule — equal to the government’s time spent investigating — will allow this case to proceed in an orderly fashion, with both parties having a fair opportunity to review all material information, advance appropriate motions, and apprise the Court of relevant legal issues."

The former president's lawyers also sidestepped an opportunity to give a concrete amount of time that they expect to take to present their defense, citing the "early stage" of the case since the July indictment and not yet reviewing all of the discovery materials.

"However, for the present, and without any waiver of rights or arguments, President Trump will adopt the same calculation as the government—4 to 6
weeks for the defense case," Trump's lawyers wrote in a footnote in their motion.

Smith's team last week proposed a far more advanced schedule than the one Trump's lawyers envisioned. Their motion last week suggested a Jan. 2, 2024, start date that would come right before the Iowa caucuses slated for Jan. 15. Chutkan is set to hold an in-person hearing to discuss the trial schedule and other pending matters on Aug. 28.

Earlier this month, prosecutor Thomas Windom revealed that the government planned to provide the former president's team with 11.6 million pages of evidence once a protective order was in place. Legal experts noted that’s a massive discovery production even for major multinational law firms, which Trump has not retained. 

At an Aug. 11 hearing, Judge Chutkan made clear that she would not want to factor in political considerations into her rulings, but Trump’s lawyers argued that the collision between the criminal cases and their client’s status as the GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination would be impossible to ignore.

The Washington, D.C.-based federal judge must also contend with the logjam building on court calendars across the Eastern Seaboard over Trump’s other criminal and civil cases.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan scheduled a trial for March 2024, in Trump’s hush-money case. 

In the first criminal case filed against him, Trump stands accused of falsifying business records dozens of times in order to execute hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, in order to silence their affair before the 2016 presidential election. 

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled a May 2024 trial date on allegations that Trump mishandled more than 100 classified documents inside Mar-a-Lago, then engaged in a cover-up when asked by authorities to return them.

Judges have not yet set trial dates for Trump’s remaining criminal cases, which are state and federal reckonings over his attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election. Smith wants to ring in the new year with a Jan. 2 trial, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wants her newly filed racketeering case to see a jury on March 4, 2024, a request likely to conflict with the hush-money trial.

Trump also has civil trials coming to a reckoning soon, including a $250 million fraud case filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James in October 2023. Next January, Trump is scheduled to face a second trial stemming from a lawsuit against him by writer E. Jean Carroll, who won a $5 million verdict after a jury found that the former president sexually abused and defamed her. 

Trump notably did not attend that civil trial, a fact that Carroll’s attorneys emphasized to the jury, but a second trial could conflict with the prosecution’s requested trial date in the Jan. 6 case, if it is granted.