Two weeks notice
Alvin Bragg and his team have been so tight lipped about Donald Trump’s criminal trial, we’ve generally gone into each day not knowing who the next witness is going to be. Nor do we have a list of witnesses. We can all guess who the key witnesses will very likely be, but there’s nothing official.
This has led to a lot of questions about just how long the trial might take. For instance, two weeks ago Michael Cohen announced that he was going silent about Trump until after his testimony – which Cohen said could be a month or more away. So just how long is this trial going to go on?
But now prosecutors are reportedly informing Judge Merchan that they expect their case to take another two weeks. In other words, barring any scheduling issues or unexpectedly long cross examinations, the prosecution will be resting its case on or around May 21st.
This still leaves the question of how long or short the defense presentation will be. Trump’s attorneys could opt to put a ton of irrelevant witnesses on the stand, to make it look like they’re at least trying. Or they end up calling the bare minimum of witnesses, in order to give the impression that they think the prosecution’s case needs no rebuttal. Trump is now predictably backing down from his prior assertion that he would testify, but given his increasing erraticism, it’s probably still an outside possibility.
In any case, we now know that the prosecution is planning to wrap up in two weeks. It might be a fair guess that the defense could then take anywhere from zero to two weeks. Throw in a few days for closing arguments and a few more for jury deliberation, and the verdict could come somewhere between the end of May and the middle of June. That’s not very far away.
