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Ex-White House ethics czar predicts timing of Trump's election conspiracy trial
August 11, 2023 8:49PM ET
Donald Trump at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. White House Photo by Tia Dufour.
Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 election conspiracy case is likely to go to trial ahead of the other criminal cases the former president is facing, a legal expert said Friday.
Former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen during an appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” didn’t predict a date, but he said it’s “clear” the case will go to trial in the early part of next year.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, during a hearing on Friday signaled she’s likely to take a no-nonsense approach to the case against the former president, and perhaps more importantly, that the political calendar won’t influence her court’s calendar.
“It is a bedrock principle of the judicial process in this country,” she said Friday, quoting precedent according to CNN’s reporting, “that legal trials are not like elections, to be won through the use of the meeting hall, the radio and the newspaper.”
“This case is no exception,” she said.
Eisen told guest host John Berman that “she's gonna set this trial down on the calendar in the first part of 2024. That's clear.”
“Number one, there's a legal presumption under the speedy trial act 70 days that would give us October, the government is already allowing more time. Number two, she said that she cannot and will not factor in the effect on political campaigns, John."
He continued:
“That means she's going to treat him like any other defendant who has a day job and then that comment, the more ‘inflammatory’ remarks there are, the faster I'll schedule this trial because of the potential effect on the jury pool.”
OTHER NEWS: This issue was on Judge Chutkan's mind during Trump hearing: former prosecutor
That led Eisen to the obvious question, “who makes more inflammatory comments than Donald Trump?”
“All indications are that we are going to see this trial, I think probably the first of the major criminal trials of Donald Trump that will take place,” Eisen said.
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