By Jack Phillips
Former President Donald Trump’s attorney and spokeswoman Alina Habba proclaimed Sunday that dates set in his four criminal trials are not realistic and predicted they will be rescheduled.
During a Sunday interview on Fox News, Ms. Habba was asked about how his lawyers were trying to prepare for the four trials in different jurisdictions while maintaining his 2024 campaign for president.
“These trial dates are going to move. It’s unrealistic. It’s theatrics,” she said of the current trial schedule. “No judge is going to say that you can be on two trials at once in two different states, because a lot of these overlap.”
Judges, she said, “look at the start date of the trial, but these are four-to-six-week trials at the least. So there’s no way they’re not going to overlap. They’re gonna have to go into October, November of next year.”
Ms. Habba, meanwhile, said that all the cases brought against the 45th president are designed to “tie him up” amid the campaign and as he’s currently the top-polled GOP candidate. “They intentionally waited years and years” to bring charges against the former president, she told the outlet.
When asked about how President Trump faces a maximum 700 years in prison for all the charges—federal and state—against him, she said that it’s a bid to intimidate him during his campaign.
President Trump faces multiple charges in a 2020 election case that was brought by special counsel Jack Smith. Those charges include conspiracy against rights, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, according to an indictment unsealed last month.
Mr. Smith’s team has also charged the former president on multiple charges relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House. In may, the special counsel claimed President Trump engaged in felony violations of national security laws and conspiracy to obstruct justices.
Earlier this month, in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged President Trump and more than a dozen other individuals with unlawfully conspiring to conduct a criminal enterprise after the 2020 election in the state. On Aug. 25, President Trump was booked at the Fulton County Jail and had his mugshot taken, which immediately went viral on social media.
About an hour after the mugshot was released, the former president returned to X for the first time after having been banned from the platform more than two years ago, when it was called Twitter. He posted the mugshot with text that accused prosecutors of engaging in election interference, while he also directed supporters to a donation website.
In late March, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted President Trump on charges related to payments to an adult performer during the 2016 election. A trial has been scheduled for March 2023.
In the federal cases and the Manhattan case brought by Mr. Bragg, President Trump has pleaded not guilty. He has also categorically denied wrongdoing in the Fulton County case, accusing prosecutors of engaging in a politically motivated witch hunt to interfere with his 2024 presidential run.
Harrison William Prescott Floyd, who is accused of harassing a Fulton County election worker, did not negotiate a bond ahead of time and remained in the jail after turning himself in on Thursday. Federal court records from Maryland show Mr. Floyd, identified as a former U.S. Marine who’s active with the group Black Voices for Trump, was also arrested three months ago on a federal warrant that accuses him of aggressively confronting two FBI agents sent to serve him with a grand jury subpoena.
A lawyer for Mr. Floyd did not return an Epoch Times request for comment on Aug. 25.
Next, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is expected to set arraignments for each of the defendants in the coming weeks. That’s when they would appear in court for the first time and enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, though it is not uncommon for defendants in Georgia to waive arraignment.
At least five of them are trying to move their cases to federal court. Two are former federal officials—former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former U.S. Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark—while the other three are former Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer, Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, and former GOP chair for Coffee County Cathy Latham.
A judge is to hear arguments on Mr. Meadows’s request on Monday and on Mr. Clark’s on Sept. 18. There has been speculation that President Trump will also try to move his case to federal court.
The former president’s attorney, Steve Sadow, on Aug. 25 filed an objection to the proposed broad October trial date and a March date that Ms. Willis had previously suggested. He asked that Trump’s case be separated from attorney Kenneth Chesebro, another co-defendant, and any other co-defendant who files a speedy trial demand.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
