Updated: 09/05/2024 02:08 PM EDT The 2024 presidential race will have no bearing on the schedule of Donald Trump’s criminal proceedings for seeking to subvert the 2020 election, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan vowed Thursday.
“The electoral process and the timing of the election … is not relevant here,” Chutkan said at a hearing to plan next steps in the case. “This court is not concerned with the electoral schedule."
During her first significant foray into the case since a fight over presidential immunity reached the Supreme Court and waylaid the proceedings for nine months, Chutkan declined to consider setting a new trial date, calling it an “exercise in futility.” Numerous pretrial disputes first need to be resolved, and both sides say they expect another appeal to freeze the case once again.
However, Chutkan appeared inclined to give prosecutors a chance to lay out damaging evidence against Trump within the next few weeks — a timeline that would coincide with the ramp-up of early voting and the critical final weeks of the presidential campaign. That possibility met fierce pushback from Trump’s attorney, John Lauro, who said it would permit prosecutors to “load up” the public record with damaging information “at this very sensitive time in our nation’s history.”
Special counsel Jack Smith, who was present in court, is seeking Chutkan’s permission to submit an extensive brief laying out the facts of the case against Trump, a response to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that granted broad immunity for “official” presidential acts and ordered Chutkan to evaluate whether Trump is immune from the allegations that he abused his power to try to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
The brief and its potential public release raises the prospect of a series of damaging legal developments for Trump in the closing weeks of the 2024 election cycle, just as voters are casting early votes in key states. Trump is also slated to face sentencing for his conviction in the New York hush money case on Sept. 18.
Though Chutkan seemed poised to allow Smith’s team to offer up their evidence in the next few weeks, just how much of it will become public and how much of it will be new is unclear. Prosecutor Thomas Windom said he expected the filing would include “a substantial number of exhibits,” including grand jury transcripts that have so far been under wraps.
The parties seem certain to dispute what portions of the prosecutors’ written presentation will be made public, and the judge could potentially be in the position of resolving that question in the days leading up to Election Day. Prosecutors noted that the decision on what becomes public is largely at Chutkan’s discretion, and any fight over that issue could push the release of damaging details into mid-October or later.
“It is the court that will decide what is unsealed,” Windom noted. “It is not the defense or the prosecution that will do that.”
Chutkan said she would issue a formal order later Thursday setting out a timeline to resolve the immunity issue. Unspoken during the hearing: the reality that a Trump victory in the upcoming election would doom the prosecution altogether, rendering much of the debate over the future of the case moot. If elected, Trump is expected to order the Justice Department to drop the case — and even if he didn’t, the department has a long-standing policy that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
The bulk of Thursday’s argument focused on prosecutors’ request to resolve the immunity issue quickly and in one fell swoop — knowing that Trump will once again force a delay by appealing any adverse ruling — rather than in piecemeal phases. Lauro, on the other hand, urged Chutkan to consider first whether Trump’s conversations with former Vice President Mike Pence — key evidence at the heart of the case — is immune from being admitted as evidence, a determination they say is fatal to the entire indictment.
Lauro said prosecutors took a “calculated risk” by relying so heavily on the Pence conversations in their case against Trump. Prosecutors have alleged that Trump’s pressure on Pence to reject the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021, was a part of a broader conspiracy to subvert the election.
"They're going to lose that bet, one way or another,” Lauro said.
The hour-and-15-minute hearing was the first trial-court session in the case since October 2023, when Chutkan put Trump under a gag order. It was also notable for a resumption of the clear tension between the judge and Trump’s lawyers.
Chutkan — an Obama appointee — bristled at many of Lauro’s comments, including his allusion to the upcoming election as a sensitive period for the case.
When Lauro claimed prosecutors were seeking a “rush to judgment,” Chutkan retorted, “This case has been pending for over a year. We're hardly sprinting to the finish line."
"The subtext of your argument here about these sensitive times and the desire not to have any evidentiary briefing before this year — it strikes me that what you’re trying to do is affect the presentation of this case so as not to impinge on an election,” Chutkan said, adding that this consideration was not relevant to her decision-making.
When Lauro described the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity as “crystal clear,” Chutkan chuckled audibly. Many legal experts have complained that the ruling is rife with uncertainties and leaves numerous key questions unresolved .
Lauro’s complaint that the prosecution’s proposal exhibited “fundamental unfairness never before seen in a district court” prompted a visible eye roll and head shake from Chutkan, who at other times rested her head in her hands and looked bored with some of Lauro’s more inflammatory remarks.
“I don’t need any more rhetoric on how serious or grave this is,” the judge said brusquely.
Trump was absent from the hearing, which diminished the drama of the session a bit while also serving as a reminder of how the four criminal cases brought against him have proven to be a far less formidable obstacle to his presidential campaign than many had expected. Chutkan had the power to make Trump attend the session Thursday, but excused him.
The case has been at a standstill since late last year, when Trump appealed Chutkan’s rejection of his claim that the case had to be tossed out because of legal immunity he enjoyed as president. A federal appeals court agreed with the judge, but the Supreme Court ultimately took up Trump’s appeal. It ruled in July that presidents have immunity for many kinds of official acts and that judges need to carefully scrutinize the charges and evidence in such cases to determine what is allowable.
A solo concurrence Justice Clarence Thomas wrote to that ruling played an unusual role in the session Thursday as Lauro initially argued that the conservative justice had essentially instructed Trump’s lawyers to raise the question of whether Smith’s appointment was constitutional — something they did not do in the months after the case was brought last August.
“Justice Thomas, in effect, directed us to raise this issue and that we do it immediately,” Lauro declared, although he later retreated somewhat from that assertion. “I shouldn’t say he absolutely said, you know, do it.”
Lauro also cited the ruling U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon issued in July in which she ruled Smith’s appointment unconstitutional and tossed out the special counsel’s other case against Trump accusing him of hoarding classified documents at his Florida home.
Smith is appealing that decision.
While Cannon’s handling of Trump’s Florida case has been widely criticized in legal circles, Lauro echoed his client by calling her “a very respected judge.”
Chutkan didn’t comment on her esteem for the Trump-appointed judge, but did say she found the ruling not to be “particularly persuasive.” Chutkan said she is likely to reject the argument due to binding D.C. Circuit precedents on the issue, but signaled she will allow Trump’s team to file such a motion even though the deadline for that sort of filing passed before the case was halted by Trump’s appeal last year.
Last week, Smith obtained a revised indictment in the case that removes some allegations the Supreme Court said were definitively covered by presidential immunity, although the basic charges remained the same. Though Trump didn’t attend the hearing Thursday, his lawyers formally entered not guilty pleas to the charges in the new indictment.
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