After GA RICO Defendant Demands Speedy Trial, Court Sets Case For October 2023

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(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Yesterday, attorney Ken Chesebro threw a wrench in the works of the Georgia RICO case in which he and 17 other co-defendants are accused of participating in a RICO conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election.

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Chesebro, a onetime Larry Tribe protégé, made a fortune in Bitcoin and decided that, on second thought, Republicans’ loathing of progressive taxation made perfect sense. He went on to offer intellectual heft to the fake electors scheme, authoring multiple coups which provided the supposed legal justification for the plot. In Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment, he’s unindicted Co-Conspirator 5. But when Fani Willis unsealed her indictment last week, he was charged with six counts of criminal conspiracy and one count of violating the state’s RICO act.

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This is the first indictment for Chesebro, but it is not the first for Trump, whose strategy has been to delay these cases as long as possible. He’s even proposed that the DC trial for election interference be held in April of 2026.

And so it must have come as a shock yesterday when Chesebro filed a demand for speedy trial, insisting on his right to be tried by the end of October. (The Georgia trial calendar appears to be slightly less complicated than calculating ovulation in base 11. But only slightly.)

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Perhaps even more shockingly, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis called Chesebro’s bluff. Previously, the DA had petitioned the court to set a March 4, 2024 trial date — something her critics derided as preposterously fast. But today, the DA moved “without waiving any objection as to the sufficiency” of Chesebro’s demand, to “specially set the trial in this case to commence for all 19 defendants on October 23, 2023.”

It is no shock at all, however, that the former president is not down with this plan. After firing his longtime Georgia lawyer Drew Findling this morning, he had his new counsel Steven Sadow fire off a motion apprising Judge Scott McAfee that the only thing Trump is in a hurry to do is schedule a time to talk about pushing this trial off to … well, preferably never.

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The document consists of three paragraphs, each of which begins by calling the former president “President Trump.” Sadow learns fast!

In it, Trump objects to the state’s acquiescence to Chesebro’s motion, informs the court of his intent to sever his case from Chesebro’s, and “requests the Court set a scheduling conference at its earliest convenience so he can be heard on the State’s motions for entry of pretrial scheduling order and to specially set trial.”

Meanwhile, it seems highly unlikely that the pending federal removal petitions by Mark Meadows and Jeff will be fully adjudicated before October, assuming that either man will immediately appeal any loss to the Eleventh Circuit.

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And soon we will get the final mugshot, according to Trump, who bleated this afternoon “ARREST TIME: 7:30 P.M.”

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Of course, in the same breath he claims that 231 million people watched his interview with Tucker Carlson last night, so … perhaps take that one with a grain of salt.

And, BREAKING, as we type, Judge McAfee has just agreed to the prosecutors’ scheduling motion. October 23, 2023, it is.

Fulton Judge Scott McAfee laying out a very aggressive timetable for Chesebro's Fulton trial, with an Oct. 23, 2023 start date. pic.twitter.com/uqOmqzuHRc

— Tamar Hallerman (@TamarHallerman) August 24, 2023

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Courts, Crime, Donald Trump, Georgia, Government