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Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump, along with 16 co-defendants, will not go to trial in October with two other defendants in the Georgia election subversion case but will move forward on their own schedule, with a trial date yet be announced, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee announced Thursday.
The two remaining co-defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, sought speedy trials and are scheduled to begin in October. There is a hearing on their case on Thursday.
McAfee’s order shuts down the effort by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to have all 19 defendants tried together in October.
“Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ politically motivated, wrongful attempt to deny President Trump due process of law by arguing that no severances should be granted has been summarily squashed by the court,” a spokesperson for Trump said. “Willis’ unjust rush to judgment in order to please her radical political base has simply failed.”
While McAfee didn’t set a trial date for Trump and 16 of his co-defendants, the timeline he sets out in a court order Thursday means they wouldn’t go on trial before at least December.
The new schedule laid out by the judge signals he wants to start hashing out pretrial disputes with the batch of 17 defendants by the end of the year. The judge is ordering discovery to start by October 6.
However, there is no set timeline yet for the trial for the 17 defendants nor is there one for resolving disputes over what evidence can be presented to the jury. McAfee ordered that other types of pretrial motions be filed by December 1, but he has not scheduled a hearing on those requests.
At the pace McAfee laid out, federal courts will have some time to address the efforts by some defendants in the case to move their prosecutions to federal court.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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