Former President Donald Trump won’t have to stand trial next month in Fulton County, Ga., as District Attorney Fani Willis had hoped, thanks to a big ruling from the judge overseeing the case.

Willis had pushed for an October 23 start date for Trump and his 18 co-defendants, but Judge Scott McAfee said that rushing a trial for all 19 co-defendants would likely violate their rights to a fair process. As such, Trump’s trial will now take place at another time, which has yet to be determined.

“The precarious ability of the Court to safeguard each defendant’s due process rights and preparation ensure adequate pretrial preparation on the current accelerated track weighs heavily, if not decisively, in favor of severance,” McAfee ordered, according to the Daily Wire, which noted further:

Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, lawyers who worked with Trump following the presidential election in Georgia, will go to court on October 23 after McAfee ruled to sever their trials. Chesebro faces seven charges, including two counts of first degree ​​conspiracy to commit forgery and two counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings. Powell also faces seven charges, including two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud. 

According to McAfee, there would be logistical problems with trying all 19 defendants at the same time, which Willis had wanted.

“The Fulton County Courthouse simply contains 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 in his decision.

The 19 co-defendants are confronting a range of charges, yet they all stand accused of participating in a purported conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election outcomes under Georgia’s iteration of the federal RICO statute. The law was originally designed to dismantle organized crime syndicates like the mafia and is also aimed at combating racketeering and other organized criminal activities.

Trump has entered a plea of not guilty to the 13 charges brought against him and has petitioned for the charges to be dismissed, asserting that his actions fall outside the jurisdiction of the state to prosecute.

The ex-president, who is currently leading the 2024 Republican presidential primary race, has contended that the charges filed against him in Georgia, as well as those in New York, Florida, and Washington, D.C., are driven by political motives. Following his arrest in Fulton County, Trump continued to assert his innocence, claiming that his actions in Georgia were within his legal rights.

“We did nothing wrong at all,” he said after his arrest last month. “And we have every right every single right to challenge an election that we think is dishonest. We think it’s very dishonest. So thank you all very much and I’ll see you very soon. Thank you very much.”