Fani T. Willis, the district lawyer of Fulton County, Ga., mentioned on Monday that she hoped her criminal racketeering case towards former President Donald J. Trump and his allies might go to trial in about six months. On Wednesday, her workplace filed a movement searching for a March 4 begin date.

But racketeering instances should not constructed for velocity. Just getting this one collectively has taken two and a half years. The effort to proceed to trial rapidly in Georgia will nearly definitely be difficult by the schedules of three different legal instances that Mr. Trump is already dealing with in Florida, New York and Washington, D.C.

And with 19 defendants represented by a fleet of attorneys, plenty of specialists on Tuesday didn’t anticipate a clean path ahead and raised the likelihood that the case might doubtlessly take years, relatively than months, to lumber towards a conclusion. One defendant, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of workers, has already filed a movement to maneuver the case to federal court docket.

On Wednesday, the choose overseeing Mr. Meadow’s elimination effort gave Ms. Willis’s workplace till Aug. 23 to reply to his movement, and set an evidentiary listening to for Aug. 28.

Mr. Trump himself has a protracted historical past of utilizing delay techniques in his varied authorized entanglements, and he, too, is more likely to file pretrial motions searching for to get the case thrown out or moved to federal court docket. The choose within the case may additionally decide that just a little over six months is just not sufficient time for protection legal professionals to arrange for a trial involving so many defendants and 41 whole prices, together with a racketeering rely that took prosecutors practically 60 pages to explain.

John B. Meixner Jr., an assistant regulation professor on the University of Georgia and a former federal prosecutor, mentioned that, usually, a six-month window from indictment to trial for a case like this one can be “a very aggressive timeline.” Prosecutors, and maybe the choose, he mentioned, might be extremely motivated to resolve the case forward of the 2024 election.

On the opposite hand, Mr. Meixner mentioned, the looming election might make Mr. Trump significantly motivated to push again his trial date in Georgia. “If the case is still ongoing, and if Mr. Trump were to win the 2024 election, we’d have a new slate of questions of whether a sitting president can be tried for a state criminal offense,” he mentioned.

Chris Timmons, an Atlanta-area lawyer and a former prosecutor, mentioned that with 19 defendants, political gamesmanship is probably not the one issue.

“It takes a while to get everybody arraigned,” he mentioned. “It takes a while to make sure everybody’s got an attorney. There’s discovery that’s got to be engaged in.”

He added: “There’s a lot of information to process to get organized, to be ready to go.”

Defendants are anticipated to be booked by the tip of subsequent week. In a movement filed on Wednesday, Ms. Willis sought to schedule arraignments for the week of Sept. 5, and proposed a timetable for different steps that will culminate with a trial beginning on March 4, the day earlier than the Super Tuesday primaries. The closing schedule is as much as the judge who has just been assigned to the case, Scott F. McAfee.

Ms. Willis has tackled complicated racketeering instances earlier than. She was the lead prosecutor on a case that dragged on for 2 years after state investigators discovered that educators in Atlanta had cheated on faculty exams. By the time the trial completed in 2015, the lead defendant had died.

Another racketeering indictment, towards the rapper often known as Young Thug and his associates, was handed up in Fulton County in May of final yr; jury choice started greater than six months later, in January, and a jury has but to be seated.

Generally talking, prosecutors desire to maneuver rapidly, whereas protection legal professionals attempt to gradual issues down.

The protection within the Trump case is more likely to argue that they want not less than as a lot time to construct their case as Ms. Willis took constructing hers, mentioned Jeffrey E. Grell, a Minneapolis lawyer who focuses on RICO instances, including that the court docket might nicely pay attention.

“The paramount obligation is to protect the defendant’s due process rights,” he mentioned.

Ms. Willis, a Democrat who took workplace in 2021 and launched her investigation into election interference in Georgia shortly thereafter, might be up for re-election subsequent yr.

Some critics say that dealing with the Trump case has precipitated her workplace to lose sight of extra conventional priorities for a D.A. “I wish I could get Fani Willis as fired up to prosecute murders in Sandy Springs as she is on this one,” mentioned Rusty Paul, the Republican mayor of Sandy Springs, a comparatively prosperous suburban metropolis in Fulton County.

He added: “I’m no fan of Donald Trump, but I’ve got murderers who committed their alleged crime in 2016 but haven’t been brought to trial.”

Atlanta’s murder rely spiked in 2020 and remained excessive for 2 years, mirroring that of many different cities in the course of the pandemic. But police knowledge reveals murders down 25 p.c thus far this yr in contrast with the identical interval in 2022. Noting that the homicide fee was dropping, Ms. Willis recently told a local radio station, “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Gerald A. Griggs, a trial lawyer and president of the Georgia N.A.A.C.P., labored with Ms. Willis within the Atlanta solicitor’s workplace years in the past. He has criticized her prior to now for what he believes is an overzealous prosecution of poor Black individuals. But he additionally describes her as one in all Georgia’s most proficient prosecutors — and one with severe expertise navigating complicated RICO instances.

That expertise, mentioned Mr. Griggs, who represented plenty of defendants within the dishonest case, may assist transfer the method alongside.

“She’s done this before,” he mentioned. “I believe individuals are underestimating her abilities as a trial lawyer.”

Jonathan Weisman and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting.