Justice Department objects to Trump’s proposed April 2026 date for DC trial

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This article was published 21/08/2023 (848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors objected Monday to the April 2026 trial date proposed by lawyers for Donald Trump in the case accusing the former president of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team said in a court filing that Trump’s lawyers last week had exaggerated the amount of material that they would need to sift through in order to be ready for trial.

In suggesting an April 2026 trial date, defense lawyers said they had been provided by prosecutors with 11.5 million pages of potential evidence to review. But prosecutors said much of that includes duplicate pages or information that is already public, such as documents from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol as well as copies of Trump’s social media posts.

“In cases such as this one, the burden of reviewing discovery cannot be measured by page count alone, and comparisons to the height of the Washington Monument and the length of a Tolstoy novel are neither helpful nor insightful; in fact, comparisons such as those are a distraction from the issue at hand — which is determining what is required to prepare for trial,” prosecutors wrote.

Smith’s team has proposed a Jan. 2, 2024 trial date.