Two key hearings on Monday – one in Georgia and one in Washington – will take the drama over Trump’s quadruple criminal indictments into a new phase, following the extraordinary scenes and political maneuvering that culminated in the release of Trump’s booking mug shot last week.
In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will sketch the first substantive evidentiary arguments in any of the cases facing Trump in a hearing on ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ bid to get his state case moved to federal court. Meadows and Trump have been charged along with 17 other aides, ex-officials and lawyers in a sweeping racketeering case alleging a broad conspiracy to change the result of the 2020 election.
At the same time in Washington, Judge Tanya Chutkan will hold a status hearing to consider dueling arguments by special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s defense team over the date for a trial in the federal investigation into Trump’s alleged attempt to prevent now-President Joe Biden from taking office. Smith wants the trial to begin January 2 – two weeks before Trump’s first big test in the 2024 primary race in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. The ex-president’s team has asked for much more time, and is proposing a date of April 2026. Trump is not expected to be at the hearing.
The two hearings will illuminate critical aspects of Trump’s challenges as he attempts the previously unthinkable feat of winning a major party presidential nomination and then the White House while standing trial in multiple criminal cases. The simultaneous hearings Monday in two cities will preview the strain on Trump and his team and the drain on resources that will unfold next year, when the former president could spend as many critical campaign moments in the courtroom as barnstorming early-voting states.
The two hearings also underscore the daunting legal equation bearing down on Trump: Even if he makes progress in one case, he could suffer serious reversals in one of the others, increasing the chances of a conviction before voters go to the polls in November 2024.
Meadows is one of several defendants who have filed to move their cases from Georgia state court to federal court, and Trump is expected to file a similar motion.
Several defendants who have filed similar removal notices, including ex-Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer and Cathy Latham, who served as a fake elector, have argued they were acting at Trump’s direction.
Meadows is arguing that the charges against him in Georgia should be dismissed under a federal immunity claim extended, in certain contexts, to individuals who are prosecuted or sued for alleged conduct that was done on behalf of the US government or was tied to their federal position.
While he may still face an uphill battle to move his case, Meadows is “uniquely situated” in Willis’ case, said Steve Vladeck, a CNN analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“Folks should be wary of this being a bellwether,” Vladeck said, describing the dispute instead as an “opening salvo in what is going to be a long and complicated series of procedural fights.”
If US District Judge Steve Jones grants Meadows’ or another defendant’s request to move the prosecution to federal court, it does not ultimately doom Willis’ case.
For one, it is not clear whether Meadows’ co-defendants would join him in the federal forum, and even if the judge accepts Meadows’ claim that his case should play out in federal court, it does not mean that Jones will buy Meadows’ arguments that the charges against him should be dismissed.
For instance, in Trump’s New York case, in which he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a federal judge rejected the former president’s bid to move the case to federal court.
20 min ago
In Monday hearing, Trump’s legal team and special counsel will spar over federal election case trial date
From CNN's Devan Cole
Special Counsel Jack Smith and former President Donald Trump. Getty Images
In filings recently submitted by the two sides to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, a significant amount of daylight stood between them over when to begin the trial, with Smith proposing a January 2024 start date and Trump asking the judge to begin the trial years later, in April 2026.
Now, both sides will make their case to the judge in-person at 10 a.m. ET.
Smith’s team told Chutkan in a filing earlier this month that the trial should begin on January 2, 2024. They said their presentation of evidence in the trial would take “no longer than four to six weeks,” meaning that Trump may need to spend his weekdays in court before a jury in the crucial first two months of a presidential election year, as primary voting begins for Republicans.
Attorneys for the former president forcefully pushed back shortly thereafter, urging the judge to reject Smith’s proposal and saying the prosecutor sought an unusually “rapid” trial schedule.
“The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial,” they wrote in their filing.
Among other things, Trump’s team argued that Smith’s proposed timeline for the trial would conflict with the other criminal and civil cases in which the former president is a defendant, including the classified documents case brought by Smith, the hush money case in New York and the Georgia election subversion case.
In the Georgia case, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week suggested an October 23, 2023, trial date, something Trump’s team also said they oppose.
Smith said in a filing to Chutkan last week that Trump was overplaying concerns about scheduling conflicts among his various criminal cases. His office offered to start jury selection a little later in December to accommodate for a hearing scheduling in the classified documents case in Florida.
Attorneys for the former president forcefully pushed back shortly thereafter, urging the judge to reject Smith’s proposal and saying the prosecutor sought an unusually “rapid” trial schedule.
“The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial,” they wrote in their filing.
The Georgia charges against Trump face a major test Monday. Here's what the judge will be considering
From CNN's Tierney Sneed and Jeremy Herb
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference at the Fulton County Government building on August 14, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will lay out the first details of her sprawling anti-racketeering case against former President Donald Trump, his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and 17 other co-defendants at a federal court hearing on Monday morning.
This will be the first time that substantive arguments will be made in court about the four criminal cases brought against Trump this year.
The subject of the hearing, set to begin at 10 a.m. ET, is Meadows’ motion to move his case to federal court and possibly have it thrown out, but it’s much more than that – it could end up acting as a mini-trial that determines the future of Fulton County’s case against the former president.
US law allows defendants in state civil suits or criminal cases to seek to move those proceedings to federal court if those defendants face charges based on conduct they carried out “under color” of the federal government.
While such proceedings are not uncommon in civil lawsuits against current and former federal officials, they are extremely rare in criminal cases, legal experts told CNN, meaning US District Judge Steve Jones will be navigating in uncertain legal territory.
“This is just that rare case where there is just not a lot of law,” Steve Vladeck, a CNN analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law said.
Meadows is arguing that under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, the federal court should dismiss the charges against him, because the conduct underlying the charges was conducted as part of his duties as a close White House adviser to Trump.
Beyond Meadows’ participation on the call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Willis has also highlighted as alleged acts in the racketeering conspiracy his surprise visit to an Atlanta election audit and a request Meadows and Trump are said to have made to a White House official to compile a memo on how to disrupt the January 6, 2021, election certification vote in Congress.
“In order to prevail, Meadows has to convince the court that when he was banging on the audit door he wasn’t representing the private interests of Donald Trump,” said Lee Kovarsky, a University of Texas law professor and expert in the removal statute.
Willis, in her response to Meadows’ filings, is leaning on a federal law known as the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using their federal office to engage in political activity, including campaign-oriented conduct. She argues Meadows’ involvement in the pressure campaign on Georgia election officials is clearly conduct he was not allowed to engage in as a federal officer, and therefore he is not entitled to the federal immunity defense.
17 min ago
Here's how the Georgia election subversion case differs from the special counsel's January 6 case
From CNN's Kaanita Iyer, Amy O'Kruk and Curt Merrill
Trump's motorcade arrives at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Thursday. Will Lanzoni/CNN
Two hearings are expected today related to former President Donald Trump's alleged election interference — one in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' case and the other related to special counsel Jack Smith's January 6 probe.
While both cases focus on the former president's attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, here's how they differ:
January 6 case
Smith's team has accused Trump of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, including by using the violence on January 6, 2021, to call on lawmakers to "delay the certification" of results.
Trump is facing four federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty.
If elected president and convicted in this case, Trump could potentially pardon himself.
Fulton County case
This case relates to Trump and his team's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia. It focuses on the so-called fake elector scheme, as well as calls from the former president and his allies to elected officials to "find votes" and decertify the election.
Willis has charged Trump and 18 others — including his former personal lawyer and ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — with 41 charges. The charges include violating the state's anti-racketeering law, and the indictment claims the defendants worked as an "enterprise" to overturn the election result.
Trump has been arrested and released on bond, but he has not yet been arraigned in this case.
If Trump is convicted and also elected president in 2024, he would not be able to pardon himself or his allies in this case — or dismiss the Fulton County prosecutors bringing the charges — as it would be a state conviction.
In Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will lay out the first details of her sprawling anti-racketeering case against Trump, his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and 17 other co-defendants. The subject of the hearing is Meadows’ motion to move his case to federal court and possibly have it thrown out. The event could act as a mini-trial that determines the future of the Fulton County case.
In Washington, DC, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hear dueling arguments from Trump's legal team and special counsel Jack Smith over when the trial should start in the federal election subversion case. Smith is proposing a January 2024 start date and Trump wants it to begin in April 2026, according to recent court filings.
Two key hearings on Monday – one in Georgia and one in Washington – will take the drama over Trump’s quadruple criminal indictments into a new phase, following the extraordinary scenes and political maneuvering that culminated in the release of Trump’s booking mug shot last week.
In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will sketch the first substantive evidentiary arguments in any of the cases facing Trump in a hearing on ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ bid to get his state case moved to federal court. Meadows and Trump have been charged along with 17 other aides, ex-officials and lawyers in a sweeping racketeering case alleging a broad conspiracy to change the result of the 2020 election.
At the same time in Washington, Judge Tanya Chutkan will hold a status hearing to consider dueling arguments by special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s defense team over the date for a trial in the federal investigation into Trump’s alleged attempt to prevent now-President Joe Biden from taking office. Smith wants the trial to begin January 2 – two weeks before Trump’s first big test in the 2024 primary race in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. The ex-president’s team has asked for much more time, and is proposing a date of April 2026. Trump is not expected to be at the hearing.
The two hearings will illuminate critical aspects of Trump’s challenges as he attempts the previously unthinkable feat of winning a major party presidential nomination and then the White House while standing trial in multiple criminal cases. The simultaneous hearings Monday in two cities will preview the strain on Trump and his team and the drain on resources that will unfold next year, when the former president could spend as many critical campaign moments in the courtroom as barnstorming early-voting states.
The two hearings also underscore the daunting legal equation bearing down on Trump: Even if he makes progress in one case, he could suffer serious reversals in one of the others, increasing the chances of a conviction before voters go to the polls in November 2024.
Meadows is one of several defendants who have filed to move their cases from Georgia state court to federal court, and Trump is expected to file a similar motion.
Several defendants who have filed similar removal notices, including ex-Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer and Cathy Latham, who served as a fake elector, have argued they were acting at Trump’s direction.
Meadows is arguing that the charges against him in Georgia should be dismissed under a federal immunity claim extended, in certain contexts, to individuals who are prosecuted or sued for alleged conduct that was done on behalf of the US government or was tied to their federal position.
While he may still face an uphill battle to move his case, Meadows is “uniquely situated” in Willis’ case, said Steve Vladeck, a CNN analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“Folks should be wary of this being a bellwether,” Vladeck said, describing the dispute instead as an “opening salvo in what is going to be a long and complicated series of procedural fights.”
If US District Judge Steve Jones grants Meadows’ or another defendant’s request to move the prosecution to federal court, it does not ultimately doom Willis’ case.
For one, it is not clear whether Meadows’ co-defendants would join him in the federal forum, and even if the judge accepts Meadows’ claim that his case should play out in federal court, it does not mean that Jones will buy Meadows’ arguments that the charges against him should be dismissed.
For instance, in Trump’s New York case, in which he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a federal judge rejected the former president’s bid to move the case to federal court.
Special Counsel Jack Smith and former President Donald Trump. Getty Images
In filings recently submitted by the two sides to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, a significant amount of daylight stood between them over when to begin the trial, with Smith proposing a January 2024 start date and Trump asking the judge to begin the trial years later, in April 2026.
Now, both sides will make their case to the judge in-person at 10 a.m. ET.
Smith’s team told Chutkan in a filing earlier this month that the trial should begin on January 2, 2024. They said their presentation of evidence in the trial would take “no longer than four to six weeks,” meaning that Trump may need to spend his weekdays in court before a jury in the crucial first two months of a presidential election year, as primary voting begins for Republicans.
Attorneys for the former president forcefully pushed back shortly thereafter, urging the judge to reject Smith’s proposal and saying the prosecutor sought an unusually “rapid” trial schedule.
“The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial,” they wrote in their filing.
Among other things, Trump’s team argued that Smith’s proposed timeline for the trial would conflict with the other criminal and civil cases in which the former president is a defendant, including the classified documents case brought by Smith, the hush money case in New York and the Georgia election subversion case.
In the Georgia case, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week suggested an October 23, 2023, trial date, something Trump’s team also said they oppose.
Smith said in a filing to Chutkan last week that Trump was overplaying concerns about scheduling conflicts among his various criminal cases. His office offered to start jury selection a little later in December to accommodate for a hearing scheduling in the classified documents case in Florida.
Attorneys for the former president forcefully pushed back shortly thereafter, urging the judge to reject Smith’s proposal and saying the prosecutor sought an unusually “rapid” trial schedule.
“The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial,” they wrote in their filing.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference at the Fulton County Government building on August 14, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will lay out the first details of her sprawling anti-racketeering case against former President Donald Trump, his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and 17 other co-defendants at a federal court hearing on Monday morning.
This will be the first time that substantive arguments will be made in court about the four criminal cases brought against Trump this year.
The subject of the hearing, set to begin at 10 a.m. ET, is Meadows’ motion to move his case to federal court and possibly have it thrown out, but it’s much more than that – it could end up acting as a mini-trial that determines the future of Fulton County’s case against the former president.
US law allows defendants in state civil suits or criminal cases to seek to move those proceedings to federal court if those defendants face charges based on conduct they carried out “under color” of the federal government.
While such proceedings are not uncommon in civil lawsuits against current and former federal officials, they are extremely rare in criminal cases, legal experts told CNN, meaning US District Judge Steve Jones will be navigating in uncertain legal territory.
“This is just that rare case where there is just not a lot of law,” Steve Vladeck, a CNN analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law said.
Meadows is arguing that under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, the federal court should dismiss the charges against him, because the conduct underlying the charges was conducted as part of his duties as a close White House adviser to Trump.
Beyond Meadows’ participation on the call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Willis has also highlighted as alleged acts in the racketeering conspiracy his surprise visit to an Atlanta election audit and a request Meadows and Trump are said to have made to a White House official to compile a memo on how to disrupt the January 6, 2021, election certification vote in Congress.
“In order to prevail, Meadows has to convince the court that when he was banging on the audit door he wasn’t representing the private interests of Donald Trump,” said Lee Kovarsky, a University of Texas law professor and expert in the removal statute.
Willis, in her response to Meadows’ filings, is leaning on a federal law known as the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using their federal office to engage in political activity, including campaign-oriented conduct. She argues Meadows’ involvement in the pressure campaign on Georgia election officials is clearly conduct he was not allowed to engage in as a federal officer, and therefore he is not entitled to the federal immunity defense.
Trump's motorcade arrives at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Thursday. Will Lanzoni/CNN
Two hearings are expected today related to former President Donald Trump's alleged election interference — one in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' case and the other related to special counsel Jack Smith's January 6 probe.
While both cases focus on the former president's attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, here's how they differ:
January 6 case
Smith's team has accused Trump of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, including by using the violence on January 6, 2021, to call on lawmakers to "delay the certification" of results.
Trump is facing four federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty.
If elected president and convicted in this case, Trump could potentially pardon himself.
Fulton County case
This case relates to Trump and his team's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia. It focuses on the so-called fake elector scheme, as well as calls from the former president and his allies to elected officials to "find votes" and decertify the election.
Willis has charged Trump and 18 others — including his former personal lawyer and ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — with 41 charges. The charges include violating the state's anti-racketeering law, and the indictment claims the defendants worked as an "enterprise" to overturn the election result.
Trump has been arrested and released on bond, but he has not yet been arraigned in this case.
If Trump is convicted and also elected president in 2024, he would not be able to pardon himself or his allies in this case — or dismiss the Fulton County prosecutors bringing the charges — as it would be a state conviction.
