West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who has called for former President Donald Trump's Washington, D.C., trial to be moved to a "fairer venue" in the Mountain State, is blasting prosecutors for their call to start the proceedings on Jan. 2 — less than two weeks before the Iowa Republican caucuses on Jan. 15.
"This is outrageous," the Republican official said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, Thursday. "How do you convince America this is not a political prosecution."
In a video with his post, Morrisey said he had to pull over by the side of the road in Hardy County, West Virginia, because he was outraged by the news over the trial date proposal and wanted to speak out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, what is happening here in America?" he said. "This is days before the first-in-the-nation caucus. This is the person who is very, very likely to win the Republican nomination. How is this not election interference?"
Earlier Thursday, prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith's team asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., to set a Jan. 2 trial date for Trump, who is charged in a four-count federal indictment for allegedly plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
The prosecutors said in court documents that they want a swift trial, which is expected to spark a legal battle with Trump's attorneys, who are suggesting they want to slow the trial down.
Smith's team is saying the government's case shouldn't take any longer than four to six weeks, but with the Iowa caucuses set for Jan. 15, that would mean a trial starting before the nation's first primary and continuing through primary elections into February and March.
"I think every American has to rise up and say these political prosecutions have to stop," Morrisey said in his video. "I'm outraged by it. I hope you are too. I've already asked for the D.C. trial to be moved to a fairer venue … there has to be a fairer way to avoid all the prejudice. Let's do this the right way, America. This is going down a really bad pathway, and we have to speak out against it."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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