Three days after taking the case off the docket due to months of grandstanding by Trump’s legal team, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is musing over the possibility that Donald Trump’s January 6 criminal trial could be postponed until August.
On Monday, Chutkan told attorneys in another case that she planned to be out of the country in early August, unless Trump’s trial had already begun, reported Politico.
“I hope not to be in the country on August 5,” Chutkan said during a press conference for another trial related to January 6, adding that if she is in the country, it will only be because “I’m in trial in another matter that has not yet returned to my calendar.”
That would push the case—which has been on hold since December while higher courts question the legitimacy of Trump’s presidential immunity claim—past the Republican National Convention on July 15 and possibly until the general election.
Sources close to the former president have said that in private, Trump is bracing for the possibility of serving jail time over the case if it comes to trial this spring. Instead, the delay might play out as a best-case scenario for Trump’s team, who are hoping that independent voters will be upset by the optics of a Democratic administration prosecuting the nation’s GOP nominee.
As Trump’s January 6 trial remains delayed, the next trial on the docket is Trump’s Stormy Daniels hush-money case in New York, which is set to begin in March.
If all else fails, Trump could still technically run for president from behind bars, and there’s a precedent for it. In 1920, the Socialist Party nominee, Eugene V. Debs, garnered nearly a million votes while serving a 10-year sentence for urging U.S. citizens to resist the World War I draft.