Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith's team asked a judge on Thursday to set a Jan. 2 trial date for former United States President Donald Trump in the case charging him with plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Prosecutors said in the court that papers they wanted the case before U. S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to move to trial swiftly in Washington's federal court. Smith's team says the government's case should take no longer than four to six weeks.
The date is just under two weeks ahead of the first votes to be polled in the Republican presidential race, with Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses scheduled for Jan. 15.
The early front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary faces charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States for what prosecutors say was a weekslong plot to subvert the will of voters and cling to power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
The indictment accuses Trump of propagating lies about election fraud he knew were false to sow distrust in the democratic process and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence and state election officials to take action in an attempt to come to power.
Donald Trump pleaded not guilty last week stating that he is innocent and termed the investigation as politically motivated.
His legal team has hinted that it will argue that he was relying on the advice of lawyers around him in 2020.
Trump was already scheduled to be in a courtroom in the heat of next year's presidential primary season, with a March 25 criminal trial scheduled in a separate case in New York stemming from hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign.
The former president is scheduled to go to trial in May in another case brought by Smith over his handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
(With AP inputs)
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