Washington DC - Former President Donald Trump and his legal team want his 2020 election interference trial to begin in 2026 – long after the next presidential election!

The request comes as special counsel Jack Smith is pushing for a January 2 start date in the case, one of four criminal prosecutions that Trump is facing in the middle of his White House reelection campaign.

"The public interest lies in justice and fair trial, not a rush to judgment," the ex-president's lawyers said in their filing.

They argued the amount of documents in the case would require months to process.

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"Assuming we could begin reviewing the documents today, we would need to proceed at a pace of 99,762 pages per day to finish the government's initial production by its proposed date for jury selection," they said.

"That is the entirety of Tolstoy's War and Peace, cover to cover, 78 times a day, every day, from now until jury selection."

Judge Tanya Chutkan is set to decide the trial date on August 28.

President Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Smith as a special counsel in the federal election conspiracy case, giving him sole charge of prosecuting decisions.

The case is arguably the most serious of the four criminal indictments brought against Trump, which have yielded 91 felony charges against him – although the Georgia case is also a candidate for that title.

The ex-president and his team have decried all the prosecutions are politically biased and part of a "witch hunt."