Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, D.C., on June 22, 2024. (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP)
A state appeals court on Wednesday quietly denied a request by Donald Trump’s lead attorney to push back some key proceedings in the case aimed at dismissing the former president’s racketeering (RICO) and election subversion charges in Georgia.
In a terse, one-sentence-long order, the Georgia Court of Appeals declined to reschedule oral arguments — ruling against a request by Trump’s attorney, Steve Sadow, to grant a continuance for him to accommodate long-ago scheduled international travel plans.
Trump’s defense attorney asked the appellate court for a relatively brief postponement of just a few weeks — which would have pushed oral arguments scheduled for December back to January 2025.
Without reference to reasoning, the court nixed that defense request.
“It was booked more than two years in advance to ensure a date certain to celebrate lead counsel’s 70th birthday and 45th wedding anniversary,” Sadow explained in a July 23 motion obtained by Atlanta-based NBC affiliate WXIA. “It is fully paid for and nonrefundable except for health-related issues.”
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, for their part, quickly responded to the defense motion and implored the appeals court to reject the travel-focused rescheduling request.
The court, in turn, appeared to side with the state.
A portion of a docket in Donald Trump’s case before the Georgia Court of Appeals (Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia).
Prosecutors are likely keen to keep the ball rolling — especially at the appellate stage in the long-delayed case where a trial is still effectively nowhere in the immediate offing or even the near future.
A sprawling, 98-page, 41-count criminal indictment was released exactly one year ago — on Aug. 14, 2023. In that charging document, the 45th president and 18 others were accused of myriad election-related crimes — premised on an alleged overarching conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State.
By late 2023, four co-defendants accepted plea deals; six other co-defendants rejected similar deals that would have required guilty pleas. Meanwhile, by late January, nine co-defendants joined together in an ongoing, semi-successful effort to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her entire office disqualified from the case.
That effort to disqualify Willis and/or dismiss the RICO indictment entirely has since picked up a considerable amount of steam — all but kiboshing district court proceedings in the case.
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘DA Willis disqualified herself’: Trump opening brief says appeals court must remove ‘unethical’ Fulton County prosecutor from RICO case and dismiss indictment entirely
The case is now before the state’s court of appeals with considerable work ahead: the issues being disputed are voluminous and broader than even the trial court’s final order on the matter, oral argument was requested and will now occur on schedule, plus the sheer number of arguments and motions necessary for 10 parties — nine defendants plus the state — means a significant paper trail is in the progress of being accumulated on the appellate court’s docket in the case stylized as Trump v. State.
The end result is any would-be trial has been indefinitely postponed and almost certainly will not occur until 2025 at the earliest.
As for now, oral arguments are slated to be held on Dec. 5.
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