Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport after surrendering at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Aug. 24, 2023.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
A trial for former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants in his criminal election conspiracy case in Georgia would take four months to complete, a prosecutor told a judge Wednesday.
More than 150 witnesses would potentially testify at the trial in Fulton County Superior Court, the prosecutor Nathan Wade said.
Wade disclosed those estimates at a court hearing where lawyers for two co-defendants in the case, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, asked Judge Scott McAfee to conduct their trials separately from the other defendants and each other.
Chesebro and Powell each have requested speedy trials in the case, with Chesebro’s trial already scheduled to begin Oct. 23.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office wants Trump and the other 18 defendants tried together, Wade told McAfee.
The prosecutor also said that if McAfee granted Chesebro and Powell separate trials, it would still take four months to conduct the trials, with the same number of witnesses as would be called for a trial with all 19 defendants at once.
Prosecutors have charged the former president and the others with a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn his loss in Georgia’s 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
Trump is separately charged in federal court in Washington with crimes related to his effort to reverse Biden’s win in the national presidential election that year.
Four additional defendants in the Georgia case besides Chesebro and Powell have filed motions asking McAfee to sever their trials from those of co-defendants.
Several defendants have asked that their cases be transferred to federal district court in Georgia, among them former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
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