The pictures, which were compiled on August 5, 2023, display special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, DC on July 1, 2022, and former US President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida on November 8, 20 22.
On Thursday, special counsel Jack Smith recommended that former President Donald Trump’s trial begin on Jan. 2 to address criminal charges related to his attempt to overturn the loss he suffered against President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
In a federal court filing in Washington, D.C., Smith asserted that the trial date would demonstrate the public’s strong desire for judicial proceedings to be conducted quickly.
Smith stated in an eight-page document that the interest is of particular importance in a case involving alleged conspiracy to undermine judicial elections by an ex-president.
The prosecutor predicted that it would take a period of four to six weeks to present his case to the jury.
According to the filing, the special counsel anticipates completing the production of evidence for Trump by August 28, when they can meet for a status conference. Smith also proposed that he set his trial date for that day.
The trial date for Trump’s lawyers is set for next week.
Trump expressed his disapproval of Smith’s proposed schedule, stating that it is designed to undermine his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
“Just prior to the crucial Iowa Caucuses, insane Jack Smith requested a trial on the Biden Indictment on January 2nd,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“An out-of-touch lunatic would only want such a date, one day after New Year, and the maximum Effect of Election Interference with IOWA!” Trump tweeted. “Such judicial proceedings, which should never take place due to my First Amendment Rights, nor massive BIDEN CORRUPTION, should be conducted only after the election, just like other Fake Biden Indictments.”
The proposed schedule would initiate the D.C. trial almost five months before the jury is called in Trump’s other federal case in Miami, which centers on his purported mishandling of confidential documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Both cases have been denied by Trump, who has pleaded not guilty.
The Florida case was previously advised by his lawyers to not be brought before the November 2024 presidential election, where Trump is running as a Republican candidate.
The Iowa caucuses, which will take place on Jan. 15, are the first of their kind in the nation.
A lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll has called for Trump to be tried in Manhattan federal court on the same day, accusing him of defamation through statements he made during and after his presidency, which accused him later of lying about raping her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.
Carroll filed a similar lawsuit last month, which resulted in him receiving $5 million from prosecutors after the Trump administration found her to have sexually assaultes and defamed her in statements made last fall. Trump was not present at the trial as per the court ruling.