Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano told Newsmax on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump's legal team has not been given enough time to form an adequate defense before his trial date regarding charges he attempted to subvert the 2020 election results.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington, D.C., set March 4, the day before Super Tuesday on the Republican presidential primary calendar, as the start date for Trump's trial, a date Trump said he is vigorously going to fight. Plus, the federal government turned over more than 12.5 million documents in discovery to the defense.
"The public policy of the United States of America is that criminal trials, all trials, should be resolved on the merits," Napolitano told "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE." "Can the government prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty? They should not be resolved on who could read the most and who can read the fastest, so she surely should have given Trump's people more time.
"Put aside he's the former president, put aside he's running for president. Put aside [the trial date] is the day before the most important Republican primary in the whole run of them. Put all that aside, he's a criminal defendant and the government wants to take his liberty away from him. His lawyers need enough time to grasp the entirety of the government's case."
Trump was indicted by the grand jury convened by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith on Aug. 1 on four counts alleging attempts to subvert the 2020 election results. Napolitano said Trump's attorneys are going to have to assemble a team to look over the millions of documents to make sure they don't miss anything that could be exculpatory.
"Jack Smith hasn't read all of those documents and no one prosecutor has read all of those documents," Napolitano said. "The government has limitless resources. They have dozens of prosecutors and FBI agents on the case. Somehow between the two or three dozen of them, all documents have been read.
"Trump's lawyers are going to have to amass a team, usually of former FBI agents and former federal prosecutors, who know what to read and know what to look for."
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.