Former President Donald Trump is seeking to push the start date of his federal trial in Washington, D.C., over his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to April 2026.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team requested that U.S. District Judge Tonya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, allow jury selection to begin in December of this year and that the trial start in January 2024.

Senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston wrote in a filing to the court that the January start date “would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial—an interest guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law in all cases, but of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes.”

Trump’s legal team countered in their filing on Thursday night by requesting that the case be pushed back until “the April 2026 trial calendar.”

Trump also guesstimates it will take him 4-6 weeks to present his defense, same estimate as prosecution, which means we're looking at a very roughly estimated 14-week trial, when you factor in jury selection. https://t.co/WLyWQsdQ1L pic.twitter.com/urHndTVAMR

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 17, 2023

Trump was indicted in the case at the start of the month on charges of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, and Conspiracy Against Rights.

“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment began. “So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

The indictment says that Trump had every right to make false claims about the election and to challenge the results of the election. It says that the charges were related to specific actions that Trump took beyond making false claims and challenging the results in court.

Chutkan has made clear that she will not give Trump any kind of special treatment and that he will be expected to behave like any other criminal defendant. She has also stated that she will not let politics interfere in the case and she considers his presidential campaign as “a day job,” no different than any other defendant.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr defended his former boss, then-President Donald Trump, in response to the latest indictment out of Fulton County, Georgia, against the 77-year-old Republican presidential candidate, but predicts that he will be convicted in one of the two federal cases that he faces by next summer.

Barr made the remarks during an interview on Fox News Thursday afternoon after Trump was charged at the start of the week with 13 felonies in Georgia over his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“Well, I’m not happy with the Georgia case,” Barr said. “I think it’s much too sweeping, much too broad, excessive case that is — make it look like people are piling on and being excessive to Trump and feed the narrative that he’s being victimized here. And I also think there’s merit in the point that this is a case that I don’t think is going to be triable before the election. It’s just too sprawling.”

Barr also hit back again on the charges out of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, saying that it was a political hit job.

Barr said that he believes Trump will be convicted on some of the dozens of felony counts that he faces in the federal criminal investigations into his handling of classified material and his alleged actions to overturn the election.

“I think the federal cases are legitimate,” he said. “At the end of the day, at the core of this thing, he engaged, in the case of the documents, in outrageous behavior where anyone would be prosecuted. I don’t know of any attorney general who could walk away from it. He’s not being prosecuted for having the documents. He’s being prosecuted for obstruction — two egregious instances are alleged. So, I think that’s a very simple case, and that should be tried. If the judge is anywhere competent, that can be concluded before the summer, and the other case after the election, he, in my opinion, he did cross the line. It wasn’t just rough and tumble politics. He crossed the line.”

Barr said that if the decision was up to him, Trump would not go to jail and instead would pay a “very substantial penalty.”

Barr also added that the lawyers in the White House at the time after the election warned Trump “that if he kept on doing this, he would spend the rest of his life tangling with the criminal justice process.”

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“And that’s exactly what’s happened,” Barr added. “He shouldn’t be surprised and no one else should be surprised.”