Donald Trump’s legal team proposed on Thursday that the trial in federal court in Washington on charges of fraud to alter the results of the 2020 election should take place in April 2026, well after the November 2024 presidential election, AFP reported on Friday.

A week ago, special prosecutor Jack Smith suggested that the trial of the former US president begin on January 2, 2024, believing that “it should not last more than four to six weeks.”

Presiding Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a hearing for August 28 to set a trial date and asked both sides to present their submissions before ruling.

“The public interest is in an honest and fair trial, not a hasty decision,” Donald Trump’s lawyers defended their motion Thursday. According to them, just studying the contents of the file can take several years. If the deadline proposed by the prosecutor’s office is chosen, “even assuming we start reviewing these documents today, we would have to move at a rate of 99,762 pages per day (…) to finish on time,” they assured. It’s like “re-reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace from cover to cover 78 times a day, and every day from today until jury selection,” at the start of the trial. April 2026, that is, more than two and a half years, will allow them to prepare a fair defense for their client and not interfere in other processes against the former president, they claim.

Donald Trump, who is campaigning to win the Republican primary to enter the presidential race for the White House in 2024, is the subject of four criminal charges: two federally, in Washington and Florida, one in New York state and fourth in Georgia.

The real estate mogul has consistently blamed his legal troubles on the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden. Citing “election meddling,” he insists those trials take place after the 2024 presidential election. “None of these trials should begin before the election” scheduled for November 2024, he said Thursday on his Truth Social platform .

The Jan. 2 date “represents an appropriate balance between the right of the accused to prepare his defense and the strong public interest in a speedy trial” in such a landmark case, in which the former president is accused of undermining the foundations of federal institutions, special prosecutor Jack Smith argued instead.

Trial dates are already set for New York (March 2024) and Florida (May 2024).