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Legal experts have suggested that any hush money trial involving Donald Trump will not take place at the time suggested by prosecutors.
Trump became the first U.S. president in history to be charged with a crime when he appeared for his arraignment at a New York court on Tuesday.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's probe. This focused on a $130,000 sum that Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen paid adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep an alleged affair she claimed she had with Trump a secret ahead of the 2016 Election.
During Tuesday's proceedings, Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan set a date of December 4 for the former president to next appear in court.
Prosecutors had also asked the judge to set a trial for January 2024— weeks before the Iowa caucus for the Republican presidential primary—with Trump's lawyers requesting the trial be pushed back to later in the year.
Trump will almost certainly fight the case from every angle while trying to push back when his trial begins.
Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said that Trump may try to delay the trial until after the 2024 Election in the hopes the Republicans win and he re-enters the White House.
"It's the defendant's right to a speedy trial—and we know Trump will want to push this out for a couple of reasons," Rahmani told Newsweek.
"One is that he feels it will help in the 2024 race, and if he wins, it's obviously well-established that no sitting president can be prosecuted," Rahmani said. "So for strategic reasons, I think they'll try to push this out. It could be a years-long process.
"Our criminal justice system is slow, and there is only so much you can do to move things along. I'm not confident we'll be seeing a trial by January 2024."
Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Ambrosio Rodriguez, a former prosecutor with the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, said that while setting the date for a defendant's second court appearance several months after their first is normal, it is highly unlikely the former president's trial will begin in January 2024, as suggested by prosecutors.
"Setting the next hearing for December 8 is a normal schedule, in fact, that December date was set as a pro forma matter," Rodriguez told Newsweek.
"I expect the defense to start filing motions to take this case apart or try to beat it in motion or through litigation pretty soon. But January 2024 is not a realistic date for the trial to start. In big cases, lawyers often set a trial date, with everyone knowing that it is not actually realistic."
Following Trump's historic arraignment on Tuesday, his attorney Joe Tacopina suggested the case will be dismissed even before it gets to trial.
"I feel that we're not going to get to a jury," Tacopina told NBC's Today show. "I think this case is going to fall on its merits on legal challenges well before we get to a jury."
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more