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© Bryn Anderson/AP/Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc/Getty Images/redit.com/Superior Court Fulton County/X/KJNFulton County DA Fani Willis • Defense Attorney Sidney Powell
Trump Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro • Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee
A Georgia judge ruled on Thursday that Donald Trump and 16 others will be tried separately from Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, who are set to go to trial next month in the case that centers on an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in that state.

Powell and Chesebro had filed demands for a speedy trial, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee had set their trial to begin October 23.

The former president and the other defendants asked to be tried separately from the two, with some arguing they would not be ready in time for an October trial.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was pushing to try all 19 co-defendants together in what she says was a massive conspiracy to take away Joe Biden's election victory in Georgia.

McAfee cited the tight timetable, among other issues, as a factor in his decision to separate Trump and 16 others from Powell and Chesebro.

The judge wrote:
'The precarious ability of the Court to safeguard each defendant's due process rights and ensure adequate pretrial preparation on the current accelerated track weighs heavily, if not decisively, in favor of severance. The courthouse simply contained no courtroom adequately large enough to hold all 19 defendants, their multiple attorneys and support staff, the sheriff's deputies, court personnel, and the State's prosecutorial team.'
He noted that it may be necessary to further divide the remaining co-defendants into smaller groups for trial.

McAfee didn't set a trial date for Trump and the remaining 16, but the timeline he established in Thursday's court order means they wouldn't go on trial before at least December.

He did say that any defendant who does not waive their right to speedy trial before October 23 will 'immediately' join that trial. Trump has already waived his right to a speedy trial.


Chesebro and Powell had sought to be tried separately from each other, but the judge also denied that request.

Some of the other co-defendants - like Rudy Giuliani - had sought to distance themselves from Powell, who was one of the most vocal of Trump allies when it came to pushing baseless conspiracy theories linking foreign governments to election interferences.

Chesebro and Powell, along with all the other co-defendants, have pleaded not guilty to all the charges in Willis' sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Chesebro is accused of committing acts 'in furtherance of the conspiracy,' according to the indictment. He was one of Trump's lawyers at the time and drafted a memo on the so-called 'alternate electors' strategy - to produce an alternative slate for the electoral college that would support Donald Trump. His lawyers argued Chesebro was just 'fulfilling his duty to his client as an attorney.'

Powell is also charged with computer-related charges that are tied to an effort to improperly access voting machines in Georgia's Coffee County, per the indictment. She's alleged to have hired and paid a computer forensics team that copied data and software from the election equipment without authorization.

Powell falsely claimed that Dominion Voting Systems helped perpetrate 'massive voter fraud' in the 2020 election.