A Judge has ruled that Trump and 16 other defendants would be tried separately from Lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro who had filed for a speedy trial.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee had set their trial to begin Oct. 23.
Trump and other defendants had asked to be tried separately because they would not get their case ready in such a short period.
“The precarious ability of the Court to safeguard each defendant’s due process rights and ensure adequate pretrial preparation on the current accelerated track weighs heavily, if not decisively, in favor of severance,” McAfee wrote. He added that it may be necessary to further divide them into smaller groups for trial.
McAfee said he was uncertain of prosecutors’ argument that trying all 19 defendants together would yield more results.
He pointed out that the Fulton County courthouse does not have a courtroom big enough to hold 19 defendants, their lawyers, and others who would need to be present, and relocating to a bigger venue could raise security concerns.
Another defendant in the Atlanta case, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, wants to distance himself from Powell by all means and spoke at length about her in an interview with special counsel Jack Smith’s team in Washington.
Chesebro and Powell had sought to be tried separately from each other, but the judge also denied the request.
