Millions of Pages of Documents Is No Reason to Delay Trump’s January 6 Trial

Next Monday, Judge Tanya Chutkan is expected to decide the date of Donald Trump’s federal criminal trial for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The two parties’ proposed dates are ages apart: Special Counsel Jack Smith has requested January 2024, and Trump has asked for more than two years later than that. Yesterday, Smith submitted a brief response to Trump’s filing. Both sides contend that their suggested schedule is what normal order requires. Smith has the better argument by far.

Contemporary trials, civil and criminal, routinely involve the tsunami of data people create day in and day out, resulting in millions of pages of documents produced during discovery. As the government’s reply highlights, Trump’s argument, resting principally on the of evidence the government produced as an excuse for significant delay, is without merit. Based on our experience in this field, it is simply disingenuous to use 19th- and 20th-century