Former United States President Donald Trump and his legal team face long odds in their bid to move his 2020 election conspiracy trial out of Washington, arguing the Republican can't possibly get a fair trial in the overwhelmingly Democratic nation's capital.
Criminal defendants routinely try to have their cases moved to increase their chances of getting a favourable jury. Trump and his attorney say they're eyeing West Virginia, which Trump easily won in 2020.
But there's a notoriously high bar for proving the jury pool is so biased or tainted by pretrial publicity that the trial must be moved. Such efforts have failed in some of the most high-profile American trials in recent memory.
And judges appointed by presidents of both political parties in Washington's federal court — including the judge overseeing Trump's trial — have repeatedly rejected similar attempts by many of the more than 1,000 Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“Jurors’ political leanings are not, by themselves, evidence that those jurors cannot fairly and impartially consider the evidence presented and apply the law as instructed by the court,” US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge appointed to Trump's case, wrote last year in denying one January 6 defendant's bid to change venue.
Yet to formally make request
Trump's defense team has yet to formally make such a request in the case accusing Trump of conspiring with allies to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat. But Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, said on CBS News on Sunday that it “absolutely” plans to do so.
“The president, like everyone sitting in this room, is entitled to a fair trial, and we’re going to get that," Lauro said.
Trump faces charges including conspiracy to de fraud the US and obstruction of Congress in the first case that seeks to hold the former president criminally responsible for his efforts to cling to power after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
He has denied any wrongdoing, and he claims that special counsel Jack Smith is targeting him in an effort to hurt his 2024 campaign.
If Trump's case stays in Washington, his trial will take place less than 1.6 kilometres from where the Capitol was attacked on January 6 by an angry mob whipped up by his election lies and intent on stopping the certification of Biden's electoral victory.
The courthouse, which has a view of the Capitol dome from its windows, has already been the site of several high-profile January 6 trials, including the seditious conspiracy cases against leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers extremist groups.
Even in some of the most intensely publicised and politically charged cases in US history, judges have ruled that fair and impartial jurors can be found — with proper questioning — in the communities where the alleged crimes occurred.
When venue change ‘makes sense’
Changes of venue can make sense in cases that are particularly notorious in a community, but Trump’s fame or infamy is hardly limited to the District of Columbia, said Vida Johnson, a Georgetown University law professor who previously worked as a public defender in DC Superior Court.
“There’s just no real basis for it,” she said of Trump's suggestions to move the trial. “You’re looking for an unbiased jury, but he’s just as well known in any place.”
A slew of January 6 rioters who have unsuccessfully tried to get their cases relocated have claimed they can't get a fair trial in a district where 92% of voters cast ballots for Biden in 2020.
In trying to make the case his trial should be moved to Virginia, a lawyer for an Oath Keepers associate claimed that DC residents “have shown that their powers of intelligent, rational thinking are suspended when Trump is involved.”
In the Justice Department's massive prosecution of the January 6 attack, only two defendants so far have been fully acquitted of all charges. And those were bench trials decided by judges, not juries.
