Trump's trials headed for a collision course over scheduling: report

Former President Donald Trump's four criminal trials are on a potential collision course with scheduling and dates — to the point where it's possible that only one of these trials could be heard before the 2024 election, reported The Messenger on Thursday evening.

"By all accounts, including her own, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has no intention of budging on the March 4, 2024, start date of Trump’s Washington D.C. trial on federal election-subversion charges," reported Steve Reilly and Darren Samuelsohn. "But even Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, doesn’t have total control over her schedule: Trump’s lawyers are pressing to get a pre-trial ruling from Chutkan on whether their client has absolute immunity from Special Counsel Jack Smith's criminal charges due to his status as a former president of the United States."

The uncertainty there is affecting other trial dates, too, said the report: "The D.C. trial currently on the books is scheduled to run for two months or longer, which, if that timetable holds, all but guarantees the need to shift Trump’s trial date that’s currently set to begin March 25 in New York."

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Meanwhile, in Florida, the controversial judge overseeing the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case is signaling she is likely to push back the May trial date in that prosecution, while in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated that trial could last late into next year or even beyond that.

Some experts have warned that the former president is laying the groundwork to pardon himself from the federal cases if he becomes president before they can be concluded — although he could not do so for the state cases.

“This is something that happens with scheduling,” former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance explained to The Messenger. “It’s uncomfortable because we’re the public and we want to know exactly what this is going to look like. But we’ll have to let the courts settle the remaining issues and then see what the firm trial dates end up looking like."