The Weekend Wrap - September 3, 2023

And you thought your calendar looked full

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap! I hope you are enjoying the holiday weekend. Here are last week’s white collar highlights:

Trump Cases

This is the current schedule for Trump’s criminal trials:

• March 4, 2024: D.C. federal case (January 6 allegations)

• March 25, 2024: New York state case (Stormy Daniels hush money)

• May 20, 2024:  Florida federal case (Mar-a-Lago documents)

• TBD: Georgia state case (January 6 allegations)

And that’s just the criminal trials. You can add to that:

• October 2, 2023: New York state civil fraud suit against Trump, some of his children, and the Trump Organization

• January 15, 2024: E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit

In between all that, of course, he’s trying to run a presidential campaign.

And you thought your calendar looked busy!

Georgia attorney mugshots: Kenneth Chesebro, Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell

Georgia State Case

All the defendants are scheduled to be arraigned in Fulton County next Wednesday, in 15-minute intervals. Arraignment is a routine procedure where the defendant is formally presented with the charges against him or her and enters a plea. Nothing of substance is likely to happen. Last Thursday Trump filed a pleading waiving his right to an in-person arraignment and entering a plea of not guilty, so he won’t be showing up.

The Georgia defendants are continuing to jockey over who will be tried together and when. Attorneys Kenneth “The Cheese” Chesebro and Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell have moved for speedy trials which would take place at the end of October – but they don’t want to be tried together. DA Fani Willis responded by suggesting that ALL defendants go to trial then unless they specifically move to be severed from the rest. Trump has already said he doesn’t want a speedy trial and can’t be ready by October.

This is going to be a complicated mess to sort out, but trying all nineteen defendants together was never realistic. The DA will almost certainly need several trials. But the first could be as early as this fall, and the judge has already said it will be live streamed over the court’s YouTube channel.

Sounds like some must-see TV to me. Meanwhile, while we wait I decided to try my hand at tabloid headline writing:

The best reply on X: “You’re a dad, obviously.”