Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the Georgia 2020 election subversion case, is set to hold a hearing on Thursday to address a series of legal requests submitted by two of former President Donald Trump's co-defendants ahead of their trial next month.
McAfee, who has said he anticipates holding weekly check-ins with the defendants who are hurtling ahead on a speedy trial calendar, is expected to cover at least three motions from Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, according to a hearing notice filed on Monday.
Those include a motion to speak with the grand jurors who handed up the indictment, another to unseal transcripts from witnesses who testified before the special grand jury that recommended criminal charges in the election subversion case and a third to disclose the names of those described by prosecutors as un-indicted co-conspirators in the case.
Thursday's hearing comes after McAfee ruled during a hearing in Atlanta last week that Powell and Chesebro will go to trial together on October 23 -- rejecting attempts to split their cases from one another.
The judge has not decided yet whether the other 17 defendants will be also tried at that time, a critical outstanding question hanging over Thursday's motions hearing focused on Powell and Chesebro.
It is likely that prosecutors will press McAfee during Thursday's motions hearing for more clarity on when the other 17 defendants in the case could potentially go to trial.
To date, Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis and her team have maintained the position they want to hold one massive trial for all 19 defendants -- not just Chesebro and Powell.
"Breaking this case up into multiple lengthy trials would create an enormous strain on the judicial resources of the Fulton County Superior Court," Willis' team wrote in a filing this week.
"Three or more simultaneous, high-profile trials would create a host of security issues and would create unavoidable burdens on witnesses and victims, who would be forced to testify three or more times on the same set of facts in the same case," prosecutors added.
During last week's hearing, McAfee said it "seems a bit unrealistic" that a trial could be held in October for all 19 defendants -- casting doubt on the timeline that Willis wants.
Between the flurry of expected pretrial motions and the ongoing related federal litigation about moving the case out of state court, McAfee was highly skeptical of Willis' proposal for an October 23 trial for all 19 defendants, including Trump.
"It just seems a little unrealistic to handle all 19 (defendants) in 40-something days," he said last week, referring to the trial date, currently set for Chesebro and Powell.
Several of the defendants, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump-era Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, are seeking to move their case out of state court and into federal court, where they could possibly get the charges dropped under a federal immunity statute. Trump's team has raised the possibility that the former president could try to move his case to federal court as well.
McAfee pointed out last week that the federal litigation will likely be appealed, and it could take "months" for a federal appeals court to issue a decision.
"Where does that leave us in the middle of a jury trial?" he asked, adding, "It's not easy, and we've got less than two months to figure this out."
