The federal judge overseeing the case against Donald Trump for allegedly obstructing the results of the 2020 election said Monday she plans to begin his trial on March 4 - a date that falls in the middle of both Trump's 2024 presidential bid and key dates in other criminal cases against the former president.

March 4 is one day before Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states will hold primaries or caucuses to pick the Republican presidential nominee. It is not as soon as the Jan. 2 trial date proposed by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, but it is far sooner than the April 2026 date Trump's attorneys requested.

"My primary concern here, as in every case, is the interest of justice," Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said at a morning hearing.

Trump's lawyer, John Lauro, immediately said he did not believe that seven-month time frame would be enough to provide an adequate defense in a historic case - a reminder that appeals and other pre-trial skirmishes could significantly alter the trial date.

Chutkan said she was cognizant of the need to prepare, but not swayed by Trump's insistence that it would take two years to do so.

Lauro argued that much time was needed to deal with a mountain of evidence - more than 12 million pages of documents, the separate defense investigation and potentially 250 government witnesses, though prosecutors suggested the number of key witnesses is much smaller.

"The public has a right to a prompt and efficient resolution of this matter," Chutkan said. "I take seriously the defense's request that Mr. Trump be treated like any other defendant appearing before this court, and I intend to do so."

Chutkan's proposed date falls just weeks before a New York state judge plans to put Trump on trial for alleged business fraud related to hush money payments during the 2016 election campaign. Chutkan said she had spoken to the judge in that case but she did not reveal how the D.C. trial, which is expected to last about two months, would potentially impact or intersect with the other cases.

In addition, a federal judge in Florida has scheduled a separate trial there for late May, on charges that Trump mishandled and improperly retained classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructed efforts by government investigators to retrieve them.

At the hearing in D.C. federal court Monday morning, Chutkan rejected a request by Smith's team to start the election-obstruction trial in January, saying it would not give Trump's legal team "enough time to get ready for trial." On the other hand, she said, Trump's proposal to not hold a trial until April 2026 "is far beyond what is necessary."

Lauro called the government's proposed schedule "a request for a show trial, not a speedy trial," adding, "I'm sorry, your Honor. For a federal prosecutor to suggest that we could go on trial in four months is not only absurd, it's a violation of the oath to do justice."

As Lauro's voice rose, Chutkan sought to calm him.

"Let's take the temperature down," she twice advised the lawyer.

Lauro denied that he was engaging in political "rhetoric," saying he was speaking from experience as a defense attorney. "This man's liberty and life is at stake, and he deserves an adequate representation," Lauro said.

The special counsel's lawyers pushed back against the suggestion that Trump's lawyers needed that much time to review the evidence. Prosecutor Molly Gaston said her team has produced most of the discovery - pre-trial evidence that must be turned over to the defense before trial - and that the majority was already known or available to Trump.

Those documents include tweets, publicly available court documents, internal Trump political action committee and campaign documents, grand jury testimony and exhibits. "Approximately 61% of what we have provided so far, or 7.8 million pages, are pages that came from entities associated with the defendant," Gaston said.

Gaston used Trump's own words, and those of his lawyers, to argue against Trump's efforts to push the trial back.

"We are not starting fresh at indictment in this case," she said, noting that Lauro, shortly after Trump was charged, called the indictment a "regurgitation" of evidence gathered last year by the House Jan. 6 committee.

She also noted that Trump has repeatedly talked about his own knowledge of the evidence and about witnesses expected to testify - including Mike Pence, his former vice president and a rival for the 2024 nomination.

Gaston said Trump's D.C. trial should happen "as soon as possible" because the former president has been posting about the case on a near-daily basis. "This potentially prejudices the jury pool and so under the Speedy Trial Act, your honor, we need to find a time for trial as soon as the defense can reasonably be ready," the prosecutor said.

Her appeal echoed a concern Chutkan raised at an Aug. 11 hearing, in which she suggested that Trump's public statements - unusual in a federal criminal case and the type of behavior that tends to anger judges - might mean the trial should happen quickly in order to avoid witness tampering and influencing potential jurors.

The courtroom was full of spectators on Monday, even though Trump himself was not in attendance. They watched Lauro raise his voice in indignation as he labeled the prosecution as political and a 2024 trial date as "absurd."

Outside court, he and Trump's other attorneys declined to comment. They hustled out of the building and into a waiting black Mercedes, ignoring questions about the hearing and shouts from onlookers, some of whom called them traitors.

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Video: Special counsel Jack Smith on Aug. 1 announced four charges against former president Donald Trump in his investigation into the 2020 election.(The Washington Post)

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