As former President Donald J. Trump campaigns for the White House amid multiple criminal cases against him, at least one thing is clear: According to the laws of physics, he cannot be in two places at once.
Generally, criminal defendants must be present in the courtroom during their trials. Not only will this force Mr. Trump away from the campaign trail, possibly for weeks at a time, but the judges overseeing his trials will also have to jostle for position in the sequencing of the dates. The collision course is raising extraordinary — and unprecedented — questions about the logistical, legal and political challenges of various trials unfolding against the backdrop of a presidential campaign.
“Courts will have to decide how to balance the public interest in having speedy trials against Trump’s interest and the public interest in being able to campaign to make the democratic process work,” said Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham University and former prosecutor “This is a type of complexity that courts have never had to deal with before.”
More broadly, the complications make clear another reality: Mr. Trump is entangling the campaign with the courts to a degree the nation has never experienced before and raising tensions around the ideal of keeping the justice system separate from politics.
Mr. Trump and his allies have signaled that they intend to try to turn their overlapping legal problems into a referendum on the criminal justice system, seeking to turn it into a weaponized political tool of Democrats.
Mr Trump already faces a state trial on civil fraud charges in New York in October. Another trial on whether he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll will open Jan. 15, the same day as the Iowa caucuses. A trial begins on January 29 in another lawsuit, this one accusing Mr Trump, his company and three of his children of using the family name to lure vulnerable people into investing in bogus business opportunities.
Because these cases are civil, Mr. Trump could choose not to attend the trials, just as he avoided an earlier lawsuit by Ms. Carroll, in which a jury found him guilty of sexual abuse.
But he won’t have that option in a criminal case in which he is accused in New York of falsifying business records as part of a cover-up of a sex scandal shortly before the 2016 election. The opening date for that trial, which is likely to last several weeks , is in late March, about three weeks after Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states vote on March 5.
Jack Smith, the special counsel leading two federal investigations into Mr Trump, has asked the judge overseeing the prosecution in the criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s hoarding of sensitive documents to set a trial date for end of 2023.
But on Tuesday, the same day that Mr. Trump revealed that federal prosecutors could indict him in the investigation into the events that culminated in the Capitol riot, his defense lawyers argued to Judge Aileen M. Cannon that he should ‘postpone any judgment in the documents case until after the 2024 election. The heavy publicity of the campaign calendar, they said, would harm their rights.
Mr. Trump has long pursued a strategy of delaying legal matters, seeking to run out the clock. If he can push his federal trial — or trials, if he’s ultimately charged in the Jan. 6 probe — beyond the 2024 election, it’s possible he or another Republican will win the presidency and order the Justice Department to withdraw the cases.
A president does not have the authority to overturn state cases, but even if Mr. Trump were convicted, any inevitable appeals would likely still be pending on Inauguration Day in 2025. If he returns to office by then, the Justice Department could also raise constitutional challenges to try to delay any further judicial proceedings, such as a prison sentence, while he is the sitting president.
Arguing to delay the trial until after the election, Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was effectively facing off in court against his 2024 rival, President Biden.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen in the primaries, of course, but right now, he’s the leading candidate,” said Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers. “And if all things go as we hope, the person he’s up against, his administration is prosecuting him.”
But David Harbach, a prosecutor on Mr. Smith said that Mr. Trump “was no different than any other important busybody who has been impeached.” He called the claim of political influence “absolutely bogus”, seemingly more for “the court of public opinion” than a court of law.
“The attorney general appointed the special counsel to remove this investigation from political influence, and there has been none, none,” he said.
Judge Cannon, who has yet to rule on a possible trial date, indicated that in considering the delay, she believed the focus should not be on the campaign but on legal issues such as the volume and the complexity of graded tests.
Setting a trial date for the documents case is the first and most basic logistical problem. But the possibility of indictment from two investigations into the attempts of Mr. Trump to stay in power after the 2020 election, the federal investigation led by Mr. Smith and a state investigation overseen by Fani T. Willis, a Georgia district attorney who has indicated charges could come in August, could soon face each other.
There is no higher authority acting as air traffic controller when multiple judges decide on dates that could conflict. There are also no rules that give priority to federal or state cases or that any case that is charged first must go to trial first.
Brandon L. Van Grack, a former prosecutor who worked on the Russia probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, pointed to that investigation as an example. Prosecutors filed charges against Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in two jurisdictions, first in the District of Columbia and then in the Eastern District of Virginia, but the trials took place in reverse order.
“There was sensitivity to the dates of the hearings, and it was up to counsel to educate the two judges about scheduling and conflicts, but there was no rule that said the District of Columbia matter was charged first and, therefore, it went to trial first,” he said. said “It’s judicial discretion.”
As an informal practice, Mr. Green said judges overseeing potentially contentious matters sometimes call each other and work out a schedule. No procedural rules authorize such conversations, he said, but they are considered appropriate.
About the legal danger of Mr. Trump has an unwritten Justice Department rule known as the 60-day rule. As a primary or general election approaches, prosecutors should not take overt actions that could improperly influence the vote.
It is not clear, however, how this principle applies to issues that are already public and therefore less likely to tarnish a candidate’s image. In particular, Raymond Hulser, a veteran prosecutor who has been consulted for years on how to apply the 60 day ruleis a member of the team of Mr. Smith.
Complicating matters further, Mr. Trump has hired some of the same defense lawyers to handle multiple investigations against him, dragging them out over time.
Christopher Kise, another lawyer for Mr. Trump cited the former president’s full legal schedule at Tuesday’s hearing. Mr. Not only did Kise indicate that he should prepare for fraud-related trials in October and January, he also noted the role of Mr. Blanche in the March criminal trial involving falsified business records in New York.
“So these are the same attorneys dealing with the same client trying to prepare for the same type of exercises, and so I think that’s very relevant,” Kise said.
Several legal experts said that while people have a Sixth Amendment right to choose their legal representation, it is not absolute. They noted that judges could tell defendants that if their chosen attorneys are too busy to take on additional matters in a timely manner, they should hire others.
This order would give Mr. Trump something else to complain about in an appeals court, Professor Green said, adding: “I think it’s probably a losing argument.”
Alan Feuer contributed reporting from Fort Pierce, Florida.
