Key events
Trump’s attorney arrive for hearing on January 6 trial date
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump’s lawyers have arrived at federal court in Washington DC for the hearing that will determine when his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection will be held.
The former president is not expected to attend. Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s team has asked that the trial begin in January, while Trump’s attorneys have proposed starting in 2026. Federal judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of Barack Obama, is presiding over the hearing.
In Georgia, Donald Trump and 18 others are accused of a carrying out a sprawling plot aimed squarely at disrupting Joe Biden’s election win. But as the Guardian’s Timothy Pratt reports, it also had real consequences for a rural county that found itself entangled in his campaign’s unfounded allegations of vote rigging:
On Saturday afternoon, roughly 70 people gathered on folding chairs in a sweltering church meeting room in the small town of Douglas, about 200 miles (322km) south-east of Atlanta, Georgia. Less than a week earlier, Donald Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in Fulton county for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including allegedly entering the Coffee county elections office less than a mile away and copying the state’s voter software and other data.
County residents at the town hall raised concerns about the lack of accountability for those who played a role in copying software and other data, and said they felt insecure about the safety and integrity of future elections.
“People think, ‘He’s been indicted in Atlanta, so it’s over,’” 80-year-old county resident Jim Hudson said to the room, referring to Trump. “[But] how do we regroup? How do we become a county not referred to as ‘Crooked Coffee’?”
The Rev Bruce Francis read a message from Bishop Reginald T Jackson, who oversees 500 Black churches in Georgia, referring to “troubling improprieties” that had brought this town of about 12,000 residents to the world’s attention.
“The nation is now aware of the travesty that happened in 2020,” he read. “What do we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
The “travesty” was what Marilyn Marks, the town hall’s main speaker, called “the largest voting system breach in US history”. It happened in January 2021, when multiple people working on behalf of Donald Trump allegedly entered the Coffee county elections office and copied software and other digital information from the agency’s computers, gaining access to the entire elections system of the state of Georgia, home to about 7.9 million registered voters.
The digital information obtained is now in an unknown number of hands, meaning that future elections could be affected in Georgia and in other states that use Dominion Voting Systems and other equipment made by partner companies. The breach has been publicly reported for more than a year, but was launched into a global spotlight on 14 August, when the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, issued indictments to Trump and 18 others. Several people were indicted for their direct role in the Coffee county breach, and nearly half the group had some kind of involvement in the incident, according to Marks.
Trump ally fears trials will derail campaigning
Court cases are unpredictable, but with Donald Trump facing four different criminal indictments spread over three states and Washington DC, it seems likely he’ll be spending at least some of his time in courtrooms next year. The graphic below outlines what we know of his trials’ schedule so far:
All that court time could conflict with his campaign to win back the White House in next year’s election. Over the weekend, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports that one of his allies said as much, and even went so far as to accuse prosecutors of conspiring to keep him away from his presidential run:
Donald Trump’s legal spokesperson has predicted that forthcoming early trial dates in the former president’s four criminal cases will not hold, and that his multiple cases could clash with the final stages of the 2024 presidential election campaign and voting.
Alina Habba told the Fox News Sunday show that prosecutors’ plans for fast turnarounds in Trump’s two federal criminal cases and the state indictments in New York and Georgia amounted to “unrealistic theatrics”. She said that each of the trials would last from four to six weeks, raising the threat of overlapping schedules.
“No judge is going to say you can be in two trials in two different states, because a lot of these overlap. They are going to have to go into October, November of next year,” she said.
Habba, who acts as general counsel for the Trump-supporting political fundraising group Save America PAC, claimed that the possibility of extending the trials right up to election day, 5 November, next year, was “by design”.
She claimed, without providing evidence, that Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county in Georgia who is leading the prosecution of Trump over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who has spearheaded the two federal indictments, were engaged in a “coordinated effort” with partisan motive.
“We know this is intentional – it’s to tie [Trump] up, it’s definitely political,” Habba said.
Judge to decide date for Trump’s January 6 trial in day of high-stakes court hearings
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump is expected to have a big day today in not one, but two courtrooms, where judges will consider matters that could have a great impact both on the criminal trials he is facing, and on the broader 2024 campaign. At 10 am eastern time in Washington DC, federal judge Tanya Chutkan will consider when to hold his trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team wants it to begin in January, while Trump’s attorneys have proposed holding off until 2026. If prosecutors get their way, it’ll throw yet another wrench into his plans to spend next year campaigning for the White House.
At the same time in Atlanta, Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff during his final months in office, will be in federal court, arguing that his trial on charges of trying to disrupt Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago should be held there, and not in its current state court venue. If Meadows prevails, it could aid his defense against the charges brought by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, and potentially apply to Trump and the 17 other co-defendants in the case. We’ll be following both of these hearings as they happen.
Here’s what else is going on today:
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Today is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, a landmark moment in the civil rights struggle that Biden commemorated with a piece in the Washington Post.
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Vivek Ramaswamy has a piece in the American Conservative outlining his foreign policy doctrine, after he was attacked by his fellow Republican presidential contenders at last week’s primary debate.
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Ron DeSantis is taking a break from the campaign trail to return to Florida and deal with an approaching storm and the aftermath of a racist shooting in Jacksonville, Politico reports.
