Former President Donald Trump's bid to push his D.C. federal trial to 2026 could backfire, two former federal prosecutors warned in an op-ed at the conservative outlet The Bulwark. Trump's proposed April 2026 trial date threatens his legal team's credibility before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan as pre-trial proceedings begin, wrote former federal prosecutors Frederick Baron and Dennis Aftergut.
"Trump's past pattern is that his lawyers lose credibility by kowtowing to his absurd, uninformed demands. Then he tosses them like bad pennies," they wrote, adding that Trump's attorneys' "tissue-thin pretext for their ludicrous trial date request was the volume of discovery materials they need to read." But the former prosecutors argued that "entire firms exist to tackle discovery jobs like this" and records are digitized to simplify the process. "An experienced judge like Chutkan has seen many teams of lawyers prepare competently for trial in more legally and factually complex cases involving databases larger than in Trump's case—and do it in far less time than Trump has requested," they wrote.
"Trump's laughable 2026 trial date proposal will lose Judge Chutkan's trust for his lawyers faster than a bullet fired at someone standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue," they continued. Though special counsel Jack Smith's proposed January trial date is "plausible but ambitious," they added, by proposing "a date on the far side of bonkers, Trump has encouraged Judge Chutkan to ignore his papers as she picks the earliest date that gives him adequate time to prepare."
