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Court hearings in two different legal cases involving former President Donald Trump are scheduled for Monday.
In Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones will preside over a hearing in the 2020 Georgia election case brought forth by Fulton County Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis. Trump and 18 defendants are accused of trying to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
The hearing will focus on a bid by co-defendant Mark Meadows, former White House chief of staff, to move the case out of Georgia state court and to federal court.
In Washington, D.C., Trump's attorneys and special counsel Jack Smith's team are due in court to present arguments for when the former president's federal election interference case should go to trial.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hear arguments on whether the trial should begin before or after next year's presidential election. Trump currently is the clear front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination.
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Smith said in a filing earlier this month that he is prepared to go to trial by Jan. 2, ABC News reported.
Trump's lawyers, citing the large amount of discovery provided to them by the government, requested that Chutkan schedule the trial for April of 2026.
Politico reported the hearing in Atlanta could resemble "a mini-trial that will carry important lessons for the bigger battle to come."
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who could be a star witness for the prosecution at the eventual trial, is among witnesses who have been served with subpoenas to testify at the hearing.
Legal experts say a transfer to federal court would "eliminate an intrinsic home-court advantage" for Willis, Politico reported.
"Fani Willis spends her professional life in Fulton County Superior Court. She knows the court. She knows the judges. It's geographically convenient. She knows the juries. She knows everything about it," said Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
"She's prepared to do it [in federal court], but that's not her home court."
Five of the 19 co-defendants, including Meadows, have filed to remove the case to federal court, Trump, so far, has not done so.
A jury for a trial in federal court would likely be drawn from 10 counties that comprise Atlanta and its suburbs, while a state-court trial would likely include jurors only from Fulton County, which delivered a 73% to 26% victory for Joe Biden over Trump in 2020.
"It's a slightly different jury pool," Eisen said, Politico reported. "I don't think it'll be outcome-determinative. Only one of the counties went for Trump. It's almost all Biden counties in this division."
Trump also has been indicted in two other cases, one for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving office and the other involving alleged hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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