There won’t be time for four Trump trials before the 2024 election

The schedule of likely Donald Trump criminal trials in 2024 is turning into the criminal justice equivalent of a multi-car pileup.  

The Department of Justice has asked Federal District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to set a Jan. 2, 2024 trial date for the recently filed charges against Trump related to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. With the Stormy Daniels hush money trial set in New York for March 25, and the classified documents trial starting on May 20, the department’s request, if granted, would mean that in the first half of 2024 Trump will walk into a courtroom as a defendant in a new criminal trial every other month. 

That would be an unrealistic and unfair schedule, and the just-filed indictment of Trump and eighteen others in Atlanta will only make it worse.

Judge Chutkan is therefore likely to give Trump and his legal team more time to prepare for the case over the alleged conspiracy to overturn the election. But to avoid running into the previously scheduled hush money and classified documents trials, she probably can not start jury selection any earlier than July.  

Assuming, as seems likely, Trump is the Republican nominee, Chutkan will then face an unprecedented conflict between the political and judicial calendars, because the trial before her could coincide with the Republican National Convention, which runs from July 15 to 18, and even with the fall general election campaign.

In all of American history, no major party nominee has ever been forced to choose between campaigning in the general election or appearing at his own criminal trial.

At that stage, it won’t be easy to characterize Trump’s candidacy, as Judge Chutkan did at a pretrial argument last week, as a “day job.”  Will she deny Trump an adjournment to accept the nomination at the Republican convention?

The reality is that it will simply be impossible to try four criminal cases against Trump to verdict before the general election campaign season. Allowing for reasonable discovery, resolution of evidentiary issues, and inevitable unanticipated delays, two cases at most can be completed in that time.

But since two of the prosecutions would be in different state courts, and two are in different federal courts, no single judge has the authority to decide which two cases should be tried in 2024.

Case management problems are sometimes resolved informally among judges. But if that doesn’t happen, one or more of the Trump prosecutors will have to adjourn their prosecutions. The obvious candidates for stepping back are Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. 

Compared to the DOJ’s cases on January 6 and classified documents, Bragg’s case, in which Trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to an adult film actress, is minor league. In fact, it really should never have been brought at all. 

Willis filed charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, which allows prosecutors to include a broad range of criminal conduct in a single indictment. Her case is a calendar trial-buster all by itself. 

Bragg’s and Willis’s cases can be tried in 2025. Unlike the federal prosecutions, if Trump is elected, any self-pardon power he might possess would not extend to the state charges, and he would have no authority to order their dismissal. Of course, a state court conviction in 2025 of a sitting president would create enormous constitutional issues, but let’s just try to get through 2024 first. 

Absent a resolution among the presiding trial judges, or volunteer stand-downs by Bragg and Willis, to borrow a phrase, things could get wild. Fasten your seat belts.  

Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. His newest book, Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia, is due out in December.