No, Donald Trump’s Fulton County criminal trial is not off the table before the election
Yesterday the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear Donald Trump’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling that DA Fani Willis can continue prosecuting him. This quickly led most of the media and pundit class to declare that the trial was now doomed, and there was no way it could possibly happen before the election, or even happen this year.
But such doomsday declarations are nearly always hyperbolic in nature. And now that the dust has settled a bit, it turns out the trial is not off the table before the election. Is this development good news? No. Good news would have been if the appeals court had declined to hear the appeal at all. But as former prosecutor Glenn Kirschner explains, the trial judge has already made clear that he’ll keep the pretrial proceedings going during any appeal.
So if the Georgia Court of Appeals hears Trump’s request and rules against him in fairly swift fashion, the trial can begin at that point. It’s simply a matter of how long the appeals court takes. Keep in mind that the election isn’t until November, and this is still May. Willis has indicated that she was aiming for the trial to start in perhaps August. She could still very well get her wish.
