Legal scholar Mike Davis is calling foul after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a criminal trial against former President Donald Trump to begin the day before “Super Tuesday,” when Republican voters in more than a dozen states will choose who will lead their party in the 2024 election.
President Trump is currently facing four different criminal cases in four separate courts, including two federal cases.
On Monday, Judge Chutkan scheduled the trial for one of President Trump’s cases to begin on March 4, one day before “Super Tuesday.” If Judge Chutkan’s scheduling decision holds, President Trump will have to defend himself in a Washington D.C. federal court against claims he led an illegal effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“We’re looking at Democrat lawfare on several different fronts,” Mr. Davis said in an interview with NTD News’ ‘Capitol Report’ on Tuesday.
On Monday, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office revealed it had identified 12.8 million documents for discovery in the federal election case. That amounts to more than 68,000 documents to review per day between now and Judge Chutkan’s proposed trial start date.
Mr. Davis, who previously worked as the Republican chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and went on to found the Article III Project, said the timeline for President Trump’s team to prepare for the March 4 trial is unreasonable. Mr. Davis also criticized Judge Chutkan’s reasoning for allowing the March 4 start date.
“She said at the hearing setting this absurd obscenely short trial period that President Trump should have known that he was going to be indicted for a year,” Mr. Davis said. “He should have predicted he was going to be indicted. So he should have been going through his documents already for the last year, and he should just defer to the Biden Justice Department, including Jack Smith, on what they determine is important and not important on those 12 million pages of records. And then we can have this trial the day before Super Tuesday.”
Mr. Davis raised further concerns about Judge Chutkan’s ability to remain impartial, noting she was appointed by President Barack Obama and that she’d made comments about President Trump while overseeing criminal trials against his supporters who entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Trump is clearly not going to get a fair trial in Washington D.C. with this Obama judge who’s clearly partisan, clearly biased against President Trump. That’s been very clear,” he said. “She’s very biased against January 6 defendants. She’s made comments about President Trump during those trials, while at the same time, she defends the much more deadly and much more destructive [Black Lives Matter] rioters across America.”
Trump’s Other Trials
The challenges for President Trump’s legal team are compounded by an already busy schedule of criminal and civil trials.
In addition to his March 4 trial date in Washington D.C., President Trump faces a Jan. 15 civil trial date for alleged defamation, putting him in court as the primary schedule kicks off with the Iowa Caucus. President Trump also faces a March 24 trial date in New York on allegations he made unlawful hush money payments.
He faces yet another trial on May 20 in a separate federal criminal case brought by Mr. Smith over alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking to begin trying President Trump by October of this year on state-level criminal allegations that President Trump illegally challenged Georgia’s 2020 election results.
Mr. Davis defended the former president against the entire slate of civil and criminal allegations.
“We have [Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg] indicting Trump for the non-crime of a businessman settling a nuisance claim,” Mr. Davis said of the alleged hush-money payment scheme in New York.
Mr. Bragg alleged President Trump falsified business records to facilitate payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her from going public with claims they had an affair.
Defending against the allegations he mishandled classified documents after his presidency, Mr. Davis insisted President Trump’s actions are protected by the Presidential Records Act. The special counsel’s office argues the former president not only illegally retained classified documents but deceived federal officials who sought to retrieve those documents.
“And now we have Jack Smith and Fulton County DA, Atlanta DA Fani Willis, all Democrats, indicting Trump for the non-crime of objecting to a presidential election, which is allowed by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Twisting arms politically is allowed by the First Amendment,” Mr. Davis said of the two criminal cases dealing with the president’s efforts to contest the 2020 election results.
Venue Change In Georgia
President Trump is one of several co-defendants in the indictment brought by Ms. Willis in Georgia. Already, some of his co-defendants have begun submitting motions to have their cases moved from Fulton County court over to a federal court, arguing that the charges pertained to their work as federal officeholders.
On Tuesday, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows argued in a Georgia federal court that the allegations Ms. Willis brought against him all pertained to his White House work and thus should be moved to federal court in accordance with a federal statute. Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark is also attempting to move his case to federal court.
Mr. Davis argued that President Trump has a viable argument to make the same venue change motion.
“I mean, there’s the Electoral Count Act of 1887 that was passed by Congress. And the president is in charge of enforcing the Electoral Count Act of 1887,” Mr. Davis said. “So he certainly has a role in ensuring that the election is fairly administered, and so does the Justice Department including Jeff Clark, and so does the White House chief of staff including Mark Meadows.”
Mr. Meadows’s efforts to get his charges moved to a federal court could prove consequential for President Trump.
Ms. Willis has argued that the federal statute allowing federal officers to have state-level charges moved to a federal court does not apply because Mr. Meadows was not acting in his official White House capacity when he advised President Trump about how he could challenge the 2020 election results.
“There is no demonstrable basis for federal authority related to the defendant’s actions, while there is ample evidence of personal, political, unofficial intentions and activities,” Ms. Willis argued in an Aug. 23 filing before the Georgia Federal Court.
