Trump lawyer wants trial on Jan. 6 charges after election

by Lauren Sforza - 08/02/23 10:52 AM ET

Attorney John Lauro, who is representing former President Trump, suggested Wednesday that he wants to move the trial on his client’s alleged efforts to over the results of the 2020 election until after the 2024 election.

In an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on “Today,” Lauro said that that it was “absurd” that Justice Department (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith wants to see a “speedy trial” for Trump, who is slated to be arraigned Thursday. He noted that “a speedy trial is a defendant’s right,” saying that Trump should be given the opportunity to “get a hold of all the evidence and understand what the facts are.”

“He had three-and-a-half years. Why don’t we make it equal?” he said. “The bottom line is that they have 60 federal agents working on this, 60 lawyers, all kinds of government personnel, and we get this indictment and they want to go to trial in 90 days. Does that sound like justice to you?”

“Is it justice to force a former president of the United States to trial in 90 days when you’ve had three years?” he added.

When asked about his claims that prosecutors are pushing for a speedy trial to interrupt Trump’s campaign, Lauro said that prosecutors want to avoid talking about the issues against President Biden.

“The election is going on now,” Lauro argued. “They want to go to trial so that so that instead of debating the issues against Joe Biden, that the President Trump is sitting in a courtroom. How was that justice? The American people want to talk about the issues. They don’t want to do is relitigate the 2020 election.”

Lauro also suggested the trial could be held elsewhere than Washington, D.C.

There are “other options” besides heavily Democratic D.C., Lauro said on “CBS Mornings.” “I mean, there’s certainly West Virginia, which is close by. There’s other areas of the country.”

Trump was indicted Tuesday by a Washington grand jury on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The 45-page indictment contends that the former president engaged in a campaign of “dishonesty, fraud and conceit” to obstruct a “bedrock function” of a democracy.