justice
Trump’s lawyers want to delay the start of the trial
Media vehicles parked in front of the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta. photo
© Ben Gray/AP
Trump wants the trial to start in a few years. TV stations also report that the names, addresses and photos of several jurors have been published on right-wing websites.
After the indictment against the former US President Donald Trump in connection with attempted election fraud in Washington, the Republican wants to delay the start of the process. Trump’s lawyers requested on Thursday (local time) that the trial begin in the US capital in April 2026. Special Counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand, had suggested the trial begin on January 2, 2024. The responsible judge will probably decide at a hearing at the end of August.
“The public has an interest in justice and a fair trial, not in a hasty verdict,” says the application by Trump’s lawyers, who wants to run again in the November 2024 presidential election. His lawyers complain that the government material to be viewed comprises 11.5 million pages and that the download of the documents was still not complete after two days. The government was then asked to send hard drives and the material is now being fed into the system. As an illustration, a graphic was attached to the application to show that a stack of 11.5 million pages would be taller than the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument.
Information about jury members
After the indictment, information about jurors involved in the trial circulated on the internet. “We are aware that jury members’ personal information has been released on various platforms,” the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “We are working with law enforcement agencies at the local, state and national levels to determine the source of threats.”
Earlier, the television networks CNN and NBC reported that the names, addresses, photos and social media accounts of several jurors were published on right-wing websites.
There are occasional threats
In Fulton County, where the indictment against Trump was filed, it is customary for jurors’ names to be published in court papers, the CNN report said. However, the document does not contain any further personal information such as the addresses of the members of the so-called grand jury. After the publication, there were isolated threats against the jury from alleged Trump supporters on the Internet.
“It’s becoming increasingly normal for ordinary citizens who perform functions essential to our democracy to be threatened with violence by extremist Trump supporters,” Advance Democracy founder Daniel Jones told NBC television.
Most recently, charges were brought against a woman from the US state of Texas, who is said to have threatened federal judge Tanya Chutkan with death in a voice message. Chutkan is the chief justice in another trial against Trump in the capital, Washington, in which the ex-president is answering in connection with attempted election fraud and the attack by his supporters on the US Capitol.