Trump attorneys and prosecutors clash over key details of his election interference case

Key details at the center of former President Trump’s election interference criminal case were debated in a Washington courtroom Thursday. Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to slow down proceedings in the case, giving prosecutors a chance to unseal crucial, and potentially politically damaging, evidence against Trump. Amna Nawaz discussed the latest with NPR’s Carrie Johnson.

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Amna Nawaz: Key details at the center of former President Donald Trump’s election interference criminal case were debated in a Washington, D.C., courtroom this morning.

Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to slow down proceedings in the case, giving prosecutors a chance to unseal crucial and potentially politically damaging evidence against Mr. Trump in the next three weeks. The case had been on hold for several months while the former president’s team argued for presidential immunity at the Supreme Court.

NPR’s Carrie Johnson was in the courtroom for the hearing. She joins me now.

So, Carrie, today was the first time that both sets of lawyers were back in the courtroom since that big Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity earlier this summer. What was each side there to do?

Carrie Johnson, NPR: It was a big day in court. Lawyers for the special counsel, Jack Smith, wanted to suggest that their case survives even the Supreme Court decision, which required them to pare down significant parts of their case against the former President Donald Trump.

And they want to file a brief by the end of this month explaining why Trump should continue to face these charges and why he was acting in his personal capacity or his capacity as a political candidate and not in his capacity as president of the United States, when he attempted to cling to power in late ’20 and early 2021, right around the time of the January 6 insurrection.

As for Trump’s lawyers, their key strategy all along has been to delay, to delay this case. And what they now want to do, to the extent they can, is control the idea of any further damaging details coming out about January 6 in advance of the November election.

And Judge Tanya Chutkan, a former public defender, is right in the middle of all of this. She’s going to have to make those tough calls.

Amna Nawaz: Carrie, as you note here, the political timeline really does seem to matter. I mean, this is a case about Mr. Trump’s actions to overturn the 2020 election. We are now facing down the 2024 election in just a matter of weeks.

Did that political timing come up at all today?

Carrie Johnson: It absolutely did. Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, basically told the judge, this is a very sensitive time in our nation’s history. We’re talking about the presidency here.

And Judge Chutkan shot back immediately, I’m talking about a four-count felony indictment against Donald Trump. I am not talking about the presidency. The electoral calendar should play no role in this prosecution.

And, indeed, she accepted by the end of the day the special counsel proposal and set up a briefing schedule about Trump’s immunity and lingering questions about that immunity to end shortly before the election. The open question now, Amna, is whether any new detail is going to come out in public from those FBI witness interviews and grand jury testimonies in advance of the election, or whether the judge is going to keep all of those new details under seal until after voters go to the ballot box.

Amna Nawaz: Carrie, meanwhile, on another legal front, the president’s son Hunter Biden was in court today for what was supposed to be jury selection in his federal tax case.

He surprised everybody by changing his plea to guilty. What do we know about why that change and what happens now?

Carrie Johnson: A really wild day in court. My colleague Ryan Lucas from NPR was there.

We know that Hunter Biden’s lawyers said he did not want to put the family through further anguish. There was a possibility that Hunter Biden’s daughter and other family members may be called to testify. Hunter Biden, of course, had already been convicted in June in Delaware on gun charges. He’s now pleaded guilty in California on nine additional tax charges.

And what happens next in that case is sentencing in mid-December. The current president, Joe Biden, maintains he will not pardon his son. We will have to see what happens after the sentencing in California and after the election.

Amna Nawaz: In the minute or so I have left, I want to take you back to that Trump case I know you were following, because you did report that one of the biggest legal battles ahead will involve former Vice President Mike Pence. Why?

Carrie Johnson: This is a huge issue, because the Supreme Court left open the idea that Trump could be immune from prosecution for conversations with his vice president, Mike Pence.

Prosecutors are going to have to show they have overcome that high burden. They want to say that Trump was pressuring Pence in his role as president of the Senate with respect to the counting of the electoral votes in 2020 and early 2021, not in his role as president and involving executive power. And that is going to be a major fight moving forward in this Donald Trump January 6 case in D.C.

Amna Nawaz: That is NPR’s Carrie Johnson joining us tonight.

Carrie, thank you. Always good to see you.

Carrie Johnson: Thank you.