"These proposals are obviously very far apart," Chutkan said Monday. "Neither of them is acceptable.”

Chutkan said that Trump will have to prioritize the trial and that she wouldn't change the trial schedule based upon another defendant's professional obligations, say, for a professional athlete.

The public has an interest in the fair and timely administration of justice, Chutkan said. Trump's lawyer said that going to trial next year would violate the former president's rights, noting the millions of pages of discovery that prosecutors have turned over.

“This is a request for a show trial, not a speedy trial,” Trump lawyer John Lauro said of the special counsel's proposed schedule. “Mr. Trump is not above the law, but he is not below the law."

After Chutkan made her ruling, Lauro stood to make an objective on the record and state that Trump’s defense team will not be able to adequately represent their client with that trial date. Chutkan noted his objection and moved on.

Earlier in the hearing, Chutkan said that while the special counsel team's proposal was too soon, Trump's proposal of 2026 wasn't reasonable. “Discovery in 2023 is not sitting in a warehouse with boxes of paper looking at every single page,” Chutkan said.

“This case is not going to trial in 2026,” Chutkan said. She pointed out that Trump's team has had time to prepare already; the public has known about the existence of the grand jury investigating Trump since September 2022 and the identity of many of the witnesses has been known.

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Trump on four charges this month: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction; and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted. Trump, during his arraignment hearing in early August, pleaded not guilty.

In their request for a January trial, federal prosecutors said that start date “would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial — an interest guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law in all cases, but of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes."

Attorneys for Trump, in their proposal for commencing the trial in April 2026, cited the large amount of discovery in the case as well as Trump's ongoing legal issues in other jurisdictions.

Trump faces three other criminal cases: state prosecutions in New York and Georgia, and a federal prosecution in Florida in connection with his handling of classified documents. The New York trial is also scheduled to start in March, beginning on the 25th, and the trial in Florida is set for May. The judge in the Georgia case, in which Trump was arrested, booked and released Thursday, has yet to schedule trial proceedings.

Trump did not and was not required to attend Monday's 10 a.m. hearing at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse, which overlooks the site of some of the most brutal violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Chutkan, who has already received death threats in connection with the case, previously warned Trump against intimidating witnesses. “Mr. Trump, like every American, has a First Amendment right to free speech," she said. "But that right is not absolute."