Trump lawyer floats holding January 6 DC trial in 'more diverse' West Virginia

Former President Donald Trump's legal team is considering a request to change the venue of his January 6 trial from Washington, D.C., to West Virginia.

On CBS, an attorney representing the former president suggested to senior White House Correspondent Ed O'Keefe on Wednesday morning that West Virginia is in "close proximity" to the scene of the alleged crime — even though D.C. is actually where January 6 happened and the courthouse where it would take place directly overlooks the Capitol — and went on to suggest that West Virginia is "much more diverse" than D.C.

In reality, the play is clearly about trying to get a more favorable judge and jury pool.

In 2020, Trump won less than 6 percent of the vote in D.C. West Virginia was his second-best performing state, giving him nearly 70 percent of the vote. Moreover, the judge assigned to the case in D.C., Judge Tanya Chutkan, is a Barack Obama appointee well known as one of the harshest sentencers in January 6 cases.

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Trump received a much better draw in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, which like the January 6 case is being prosecuted by Jack Smith. The Mar-a-Lago case was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, a South Florida judge Trump himself appointed, and who has been accused of intervening inappropriately on behalf of Trump, and who operates out of Fort Pierce, where the jury pool is more favorable to Trump than in Palm Beach where the alleged crimes actually happened.

History suggests Trump's venue change is unlikely to succeed. Several January 6 riot defendants demanded for their own cases to be tried in their home states rather than D.C., with no success in convincing judges.