Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance told an MSNBC panel Thursday how a trial delay could help former President Donald Trump.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to hear Trump’s presidential immunity appeal, meaning the GOP frontrunner’s election interference case will remain on hold as oral arguments are scheduled for the week of April 22, 2024.
Vance broke down a potential timeline of the trial, telling “Morning Joe” panelists that the case was unlikely to conclude before the 2024 presidential election.
“It’s possible that there could be an aggressive timeline where the sun and the moon and the stars line up and this case gets to trial,” Joyce said. “But I’ll tell you, Willie, 25 years of trialing cases at DOJ, these things don’t run like clockwork.”
“For one thing, there’s some administrative time that it takes after the Supreme Court issues its ruling to get the mandate back down to the district court so that Judge Chutkan can get back to work. And it would be a mistake for her, and I don’t think we’ll see her, give Trump any less time to prepare for trial than she had initially said he would get,” the former U.S. attorney told the panel.
Joyce explained that it would be a “mistake” for Judge Tanya Chutkan to shorten the timeline of the former president’s trial because Trump would be able to argue that he was denied his due process rights in an appeal if convicted.
“We really don’t want to see this case get reversed on appeal if there is a conviction,” Joyce said.
The former U.S. attorney said she expects the judge to “make every effort” to prioritize Trump’s case. However, she added that other “realities” may extend the duration of the election interference case, such as sick witnesses and other events on the judge’s calendar. (RELATED: Sol Wisenberg Doubts DC Court Will Grant Trump Immunity, Details ‘Most Disturbing’ Part Of Prosecution)
“Of course, there’s early voting lurking in the background of all of this. Not everyone will vote on November 5,” Joyce said.
“Voting in some of the key states will start 30 to 40 days in advance of that,” she continued. “So the possibility that this case could have a jury struck, get all the way through the evidence, give the jury time to render a verdict and have all of that accomplished before people begin voting is pretty unlikely at this point.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting Trump over accusations that the former president interfered in the 2020 presidential election. Smith attempted to speed up the trial process ahead of the 2024 presidential race, which could sway the upcoming election in President Joe Biden’s favor, according to polling data from Dec. 2023.
Trump has been indicted four times, facing 91 criminal charges total.