U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is attempting to move Donald Trump’s federal election interference case forward after it returned to her docket Friday. Over the weekend, she denied the former president’s motion to dismiss the case based on “selective and vindictive prosecution” and set a court date for next week.
The Obama appointee issued an order on Saturday setting a conference to discuss the case on Aug. 16 (she said Trump doesn’t have to attend). Ahead of that date, she ordered the prosecution and the defense, by Friday, Aug. 9, to “confer and file a status report that proposes, jointly to the extent possible, a schedule for pretrial proceedings moving forward.”
Of course, the main event to come is for Chutkan to apply the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling to Trump’s case, to see what’s left of it after the high court announced a new test that at least limits prosecutions against former presidents. To what extent the ruling ultimately curbs special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump remains to be seen. We should get a sense of how the parties want that litigation to proceed by how they lay out their respective positions to Chutkan in the status report this week, after which the judge will decide what happens next in connection with the Aug. 16 conference.
The litigation is set against the backdrop of the looming presidential election, whose outcome could determine whether the case continues at all, because Trump will likely get rid of it if he regains the power to do so. Smith is separately appealing U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of Trump’s other federal case, over alleged unlawful retention of classified documents and obstruction, though that appeal won’t likely be fully resolved before the election. As for Trump’s other two criminal cases, the Georgia case is tied up on a pretrial appeal and the New York case is set for sentencing in September unless it’s derailed by immunity-related litigation. (Remember: Presidents can’t dismiss or pardon state charges.)
‘No evidence’ Trump improperly charged
Also on Saturday, Chutkan rejected one of Trump’s claims that doesn’t turn on immunity: that he was selectively and vindictively prosecuted. At the outset, Chutkan took Trump’s lawyers to task for their “improper reframing of the allegations.” She corrected his “alternate narrative” that he was charged for merely disputing the outcome of an election and working with others to propose alternate electors. Rather, the judge noted that he’s charged “with knowingly making false statements in furtherance of criminal conspiracies and for obstruction of election certification proceedings.”
Chutkan then rejected Trump’s argument that President Joe Biden and the special counsel launched the prosecution to prevent him from retaking the White House. “Finding no evidence of discriminatory purpose in the sources Defendant cites, the court is left only with his unsupported assertions that this prosecution must be politically motivated because it coexists with his campaign for the Presidency,” the judge wrote. Rejecting his vindictive prosecution claim — that he was only charged after he publicly criticized the 2020 election and certain government officials — Chutkan wrote that Trump “has presented no evidence demonstrating a likelihood of vindictiveness.”
That long-shot motion wasn’t expected to succeed, and its denial shows Chutkan clearing the decks ahead of a possible trial. Still, whether and when such a trial will happen is unclear. That will partly turn on the outcome of the forthcoming immunity litigation and, perhaps more immediately, November’s election. As ever, his best legal defense is becoming president again.
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