His defense attorney in Atlanta argued on Friday that if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, he will not be subject to a criminal trial in Georgia until at least 2029, after he leaves office as president.
“I believe that the [Constitution’s] supremacy clause and his duties as president of the United States — this trial would not take place at all until after his term in office,” Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow said.
The judge was questioning attorneys for Trump and his co-defendants regarding the prospective scheduling of a trial when Sadow made his remark.
Sadow’s reference to the supremacy clause served as an invocation of the principle that federal obligations typically take precedence over state interests.
The constitutionality of that principle as it pertains to a state’s endeavor to prosecute a president in office remains unproven.
Conversely, Sadow vehemently opposed a proposition put forth by prosecutors in Fulton County to commence the trial in August 2024, contending that such a timeline would contravene the “election interference” doctrine by depriving Trump of campaign activities during the concluding months of the election.
All three additional criminal cases against Trump are scheduled to proceed to trial the following year; however, Trump is optimistic that all of them can be postponed.
His federal trial is scheduled for March on charges of election interference, and his New York trial is scheduled for hush money payments.
His federal trial for stockpiling classified records is scheduled for May.
It was at the hearing on Friday that Trump’s legal team provided their initial statement regarding the scheduling of the Georgia case before Judge Scott McAfee.
It emphasized the intricate calculation McAfee will need to perform in order to strike an equilibrium between the necessity to promote the criminal justice system and the probability that Trump will be nominated for his party in 2024.
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