Last Updated on 04/09/2024 by Arun jain
Judge Tanya S. Chutak wasted no time last month when the biggest case of her career — former President Donald J. Trump’s indictment – she was handed back.
After watching from the sidelines for nearly eight months, Mr. Trump’s lawyers fought their way to the Supreme Court in what proved to be a largely successful argument that he has broad immunity from prosecution over charges arising from his official duties as president. Chutkan moved quickly and resumed pretrial proceedings.
Within 24 hours of receiving the case, She set the schedule To discuss the impact of the court’s immunity ruling on the case. While working on a Saturday in August, she also found time to tidy her desk and reject two separate motions by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the appeals process prohibited her from touching for nearly a year.
On Thursday, Judge Chutkan is set to preside over a hearing in federal district court in Washington where she will explain how she intends to approach the task of figuring out which parts of Mr. Trump’s indictment must be thrown out under immunity. regime and which can survive and go to trial.
Her final decision will not only shape the fate of the case, but also serve as a test of the no-nonsense style she has brought to bear on her since she was assigned last August.
Judge Chutak, appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, oversaw the case in a heavy-handed and swift manner, before Mr. Trump’s appeals of immunity stalled. She often worked weekends and showed little patience for the constant strategy by Mr. Trump and his legal team to delay the case at every turn.
Shortly after the indictment was returned, she set the tone for how she planned to handle the matter by telling Mr. Trump that when he was in her courtroom, she planned to see him as a criminal defendant, not the former president. The fact that he was running for office again, she said somewhat dismissively, was his “day job.”
In all of this, she had a colleague in Florida, Judge Allyn M. distinguished himself from Cannon, who recently Another federal case against Mr. Trump was thrown out — in which he alleged mishandling of classified documents — on the grounds that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed both actions, was improperly appointed to the job.
The ruling by Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, flew in the face of both a quarter-century of Justice Department practice and previous court decisions reaching back to the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. It also cap A series of unusual rulings and procedural moves Which was so out of line that many legal experts called on Mr. Smith to remove it.
The fate of the federal election case, which accuses Mr. Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election, depends on decisions that will be made outside Judge Chutkan’s courtroom.
If voters return Mr. Trump to office, they are certain to direct his Justice Department to kill the case or at least delay it until the end of his term. And even if he loses in November, the case will face further legal hurdles, including possible further Supreme Court review of any decisions made by Judge Chutkan on how well the charges can survive an immunity ruling.
Thursday’s hearing will be largely procedural. Mr Trump is not expected to attend, and will leave it to his lawyers to enter a formal not guilty plea. Amended version of the indictment That Mr. Smith filed last week to address the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, according to a court filing on Tuesday.
A judge is expected to consider the case – and may rule on it Dueling motions filed last week by the defense and prosecution About how he intends to address the question of whether to enforce the immunity decision for charges accusing Mr. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Smith’s deputies said in their motion that they believe the Supreme Court ruling simply “does not apply” to the allegations in the case, which they Recently recovered To home in on, as they put it, Mr. Trump’s “private campaign activity,” not his official duties as president.
Prosecutors told Judge Chutkan that they were ready to go to work whenever they were, saying they could send their court papers explaining their position “at any time the court deems appropriate.”
Mr Trump’s lawyers had very different views on how to proceed, saying even the new-age charges could not survive a ruling on immunity. Additionally, they informed Judge Chutkan that they plan to attack the case on a legal front that goes beyond the immunity issue, suggesting a schedule for additional briefings and hearings arriving in the fall of next year.
How Judge Chutkan handles these competing plans will determine how long it can take to get an indictment ready for trial and how much new evidence about Mr. Trump’s conspiracy to stay in power can be revealed through the design process.
Mr. Smith’s team has suggested, for example, that he wants to include at least some evidence in his filings that was not in the indictment. But Judge Chutak may have something to say about whether to make that evidence public or submit it under seal.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to raise different concerns and can be expected to ask Judge Chutkan for permission to file a new motion to dismiss the case before the two sides begin debating how the Supreme Court’s immunity decision will affect him.
Lawyers have already said they want to push back any detailed discussion of immunity until at least December, after the election. They have also said that they Mr. seeks to file a motion attacking Smith’s appointment, just as the classified documents case was dismissed.
While it remains unclear how Justice Chutkan will decide these issues, if her previous presence on the bench in election cases is any yardstick, she is unlikely to look favorably on efforts to unnecessarily complicate or delay.
The last time she oversaw a hearing on the matter was in October of last year, when she imposed a gag order on Mr Trump, preventing him from attacking some of the witnesses, court staff and prosecutors involved in the proceedings.
At that hearing, she continued to push things forward, taking no nonsense from Mr. Trump’s lawyers and treating the former president like any other criminal defendant.
At one point, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, objected that the trial date he chose — then set for early March — was just one day before Mr. Trump was scheduled to participate in the Super Tuesday Republican primary. .
Judge Chutkan was not interested in Mr. Lauro’s complaints.
“This trial will not result in an election cycle,” she told him, “and we are not renegotiating the trial date.”
Post Trump’s federal election case will go back to a no-nonsense judge appeared first New York Times.