Donald Trump's Georgia trial date gets scrapped as his team responds
Atlanta, Georgia - Ex-President Donald Trump's trial in the Georgia election interference case will not be going ahead in October after a judge ruled that he and 17 other defendants have to be tried at a different date.
Judge Scott McAfee ruled against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wills, who had asked for all 19 defendants to be tried together starting October 23.
The decision is a "logistical inevitability," McAfee said, since it would be impossible to fit that many people into a courtroom.
He also warned that the 17 cases severed from the original bloc might be further divided, and be tried on different timelines.
Just two co-defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, will have their trials begin in October.
McAfee lays out new case timeline as Trump team responds to the ruling
McAfee went on to argue that breaking the trial down into several different cases would also cause problems, according to CNN.
"Three or more simultaneous, high-profile trials would create a host of security issues, and would create unavoidable burdens on witnesses and victims, who would be forced to testify three or more times on the same set of facts in the same case," he explained.
While McAfee did not set a specified date for the beginning of the trial, he did signal that he wanted pretrial disputes to be settled before the end of the year, with discovery ordered to begin on October 6.
With this new timeline, the trial for Trump and 17 of the other defendants probably won't begin until sometime next year, which could be a small win for Trump's camp.
"Fulton County DA Fani Willis' politically motivated, wrongful attempt to deny President Trump due process of law by arguing that no severances should be granted has been summarily squashed by the court," a spokesperson for the Trump campaign said.
"Willis' unjust rush to judgment in order to please her radical political base has simply failed," the spokesperson added.
Cover photo: REUTERS