Judge says Trump’s campaign is ‘not relevant’ to his 2020 case

A federal judge declared Thursday that she would not let former President Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House affect the schedule of the criminal case in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

At an hourlong hearing, Judge Tanya Chutkan said the November election was simply “not relevant” to the timing of how Trump’s case should unfold.

“I am definitely not getting drawn into an election dispute,” she told Trump’s lawyer.

The hearing, in U.S. District Court in Washington, was held to discuss the next steps in the case, which had been in limbo for months as Trump pursued a claim all the way to the Supreme Court that he was immune from prosecution on the charges brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Trump’s favor in July, granting him some immunity for charges arising from certain official acts as president. The justices also ordered Chutkan to undertake the complicated task of sorting through a newly revised indictment and deciding which of its many allegations need to be tossed out under the immunity decision and which can survive and go to trial.

Chutkan did not rule from the bench on how she intends to conduct that task or offer a schedule for completing it, but said she would issue a written order laying out her plans as soon as possible.

The hearing — the first in the case since October — showcased yet again how the defense and prosecution have been at loggerheads over the issue of timing.

Speaking for the special counsel’s office, a prosecutor, Thomas P. Windom, told Chutkan that the government could send her a detailed brief within about three weeks laying out its views of why the entire new indictment should be able to withstand the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Windom noted that the brief would likely contain new information, such as FBI interviews with witnesses, that would bolster the government’s contention that Trump was not acting in his official capacity when he sought to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden, but was rather acting in his private role as a candidate for office.

John Lauro, a lawyer for Trump, took a very different view of how to move forward, arguing that any debate about immunity should be pushed off until at least December, after the election, while the defense sought to attack the case on separate grounds.

When Chutkan pushed Lauro on why he wanted to delay the discussions of immunity, he acknowledged he was concerned that some of the new information about Trump the government wanted to include in its court papers could be made public at a “sensitive time,” meaning before the election.

That prompted Chutkan to assert that she considered the timing of the election to be irrelevant.

“It strikes me that what you’re trying to do is affect the presentation of evidence in this case so as to not impinge on an election,” she told Lauro.

Lauro also argued that Chutkan should forgo a factual debate about immunity and first consider some issues related to the subject on a purely legal basis. He pointed in particular to issues surrounding Trump’s pressuring of former Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role at the congressional proceeding to count Electoral College votes Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.

Lauro contended that Trump should be immune from any charges related his conversations with Pence since such discussions were clearly official acts. Moreover, he claimed that the entire indictment should be thrown out because the grand jury had been improperly exposed to evidence about the two men’s dealings.

Windom, however, argued that even if Trump’s discussions with Pence were considered official acts, the indictment could survive. He also argued that all the issues related to immunity should be addressed at the same time so that there would be only one appellate fight over the matter.

Both sides and Chutkan appeared to agree that however she ruled, it would be appealed again to the Supreme Court — bringing more delays.

The hearing opened with a brief rearraignment of Trump, who was not in the courtroom but in New York campaigning. Through Lauro, Trump pleaded not guilty to the revised indictment.

While the specific charges were the same as in the original indictment, some parts — particularly evidence about Trump’s attempts to strong-arm the Justice Department into backing his claims of election fraud — were removed. Other parts of the charges were tweaked to reframe them as examples of what prosecutors called private “electioneering activity.”

Separately, Lauro said he intended to file a motion claiming that the case should be thrown out because Smith had been improperly appointed as special counsel. Two months ago, Judge Aileen Cannon used the same legal argument to dismiss Trump’s other federal case — the one in which he stands accused of holding on to dozens of highly sensitive classified documents after he left office.

Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, sparred at one point with Lauro about whether he should be allowed to challenge Smith’s appointment in her courtroom. She remarked that she did not find the argument “particularly persuasive” and pointed out that there was binding precedent that special prosecutors are in fact lawful from the federal appeals court that oversees her.

At one point, Lauro sought to defend his plans to challenge Smith’s appointment by arguing that Justice Clarence Thomas had questioned how the special counsel had gotten his job in a concurrence to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Lauro went so far as to say that Thomas “directed” Trump’s legal team to pursue the motion. Chutkan interrupted him, asking archly: “He directed you to do that?”

Sitting silently in the courtroom watching the proceedings, Smith seemed to share with the judge’s skepticism and nodded emphatically.

Lauro corrected himself, indicating that Thomas had merely raised the issue in the abstract.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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