DA seeks March 4 trial date for Trump Georgia election case

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday proposed a March 4 trial date for her case accusing former President Donald Trump and others of trying to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results.

Willis also suggested that Trump and the 18 other defendants in the state-level election interference case should be arraigned during the week of Sept. 5, a court filing showed.

The Atlanta-area prosecutor had previously given the defendants until noon on Aug. 25 to voluntarily surrender to Georgia authorities.

Trump is likely to challenge the timeline sketched out by Willis' office. In his other active criminal cases, Trump's attorneys have advocated for delaying the trials until after the 2024 presidential election.

So far, they have not been successful. Trump's criminal trial in New York, on charges of falsifying business records related to hush money payments, is set for March 25. A federal judge in Florida, meanwhile, set a May 20 trial date in special counsel Jack Smith's case accusing Trump of mishandling classified records.

In a separate federal case charging Trump with election-related crimes, Smith's office has proposed a Jan. 2 trial start.

"In light of Defendant Donald John Trump's other criminal and civil matters pending in the courts of our sister sovereigns, the State of Georgia proposes certain deadlines that do not conflict with these other courts' already-scheduled hearings and trial dates," Willis wrote in the filing Wednesday afternoon in Fulton County Superior Court.

Trump has reacted angrily to those dates, claiming that he is being targeted with bogus charges as part of a conspiracy to undermine his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

A Jan. 2 trial date would fall just ahead of the first-in-the-nation nominating contests in Iowa, he wrote last week in a wrathful social media post. Trump's claim that he is the victim of "election interference" — the very thing he is accused of in two separate criminal cases — has featured prominently in his recent campaign messaging.

While there is no evidence of prosecutors charging Trump to hamper his reelection bid, his legal troubles are indeed looming over his campaign schedule and putting a major financial strain on his political operations. 

Four days before his deadline to surrender in Georgia, Trump said he plans to lead a news conference at his golf club in New Jersey to unveil a "report" containing allegations of election fraud. Later in August, Trump's lawyers and Smith's prosecutors are set to appear for a hearing about how classified information will be handled in the federal election case.

Despite Trump's increasing focus on relitigating his false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, he continues to dominate the 2024 Republican primary field.

Quinnipiac University's latest poll of the primary race found 57% support for Trump among Republicans and GOP-leaning voters. His top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has seen his support shrink to just 18% of that same group.