U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will “rule quickly” on Donald Trump’s federal election subversion case, according to an attorney, as the former president faces a new deadline.
On Friday, Judge Chutkan set Trump‘s legal team a deadline for arguments against special counsel Jack Smith‘s plans to release evidence publicly in Trump’s federal election subversion case. The Republican‘s legal team now has until October 1 to respond to Smith’s motion and a deadline of October 10 to respond to the motion’s appendix.
Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights in connection with an alleged pressure campaign against former Vice President Mike Pence and state officials to reverse the 2020 election results.
Trump has denied all charges against him and repeatedly said he is the victim of a political witch hunt. He has accused Smith of attempting to interfere in the 2024 presidential election by prosecuting him. Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign team by email for comment.
Judge Chutkan‘s decision came after Smith submitted a sealed 180-page brief on Thursday outlining the government’s evidence against Donald Trump. The following day, Smith submitted a motion to publicly release the evidence.
This will include “quotations or summaries of information” from sensitive sources such as “grand jury transcripts, interview reports, or material obtained through sealed search warrants,” while redacting some information, such as the names of witnesses who could be “intimidated and threatened” by Trump supporters.
If the brief is publicly released, it will represent a turning point in the case, which has faced many delays ahead of the November election.
Jill Wine-Banks, a former Watergate prosecutor, told the SistersInLaw podcast that she believes Judge Chutkan will “rule quickly” on whether the evidence can be unsealed, meaning it could be made public before the election.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump pauses before speaking during a campaign rally at the Mosack Group warehouse in Mint Hill, North Carolina, on September 25, 2024. The Republican presidential nominee’s legal team has a new deadline in the election interference case.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
“Her history has shown that she acts quickly. So I expect that she will rule quickly enough on this that we could see it,” Wine-Banks said.
She added that Smith’s brief could include “a pretty good summary of what the facts are that relate to the superseding indictment and why the things that he still has in the charges are all either completely unofficial acts, personal acts of candidate Trump, or why they are rebuttable official acts.”
In July, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution for “official” actions, meaning that Trump could dodge some charges for his alleged plot to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
“In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives,” the ruling read.
Wine-Banks said that she believes Smith will try to prove that the evidence demonstrates that Trump’s acts are “not subject to immunity.”
Meanwhile, legal expert Barb McQuade added that the brief could include “conversations between Donald Trump and Mike Pence where he’s pressuring him to block certification of the election, and it may be that we get some testimony from Mike Pence that has never been shown publicly before.” However, McQuade said: “It may be that it gets redacted.
“I think ultimately that we’ll see a mix of a list of evidence that we’ve kind of seen before … and then lots of black bars redacting the parts that remain sensitive about witness testimony and grand jury material,” McQuade added.
Late last month, Smith filed an updated indictment of Trump, retooling the case to comply with the Supreme Court‘s ruling granting immunity to sitting presidents when conducting certain “official” acts.
The new indictment removes all accusations leveled against Trump regarding attempts to pressure the Department of Justice to falsely declare that President Joe Biden‘s 2020 election win was the result of massive fraud, after the Supreme Court ruled that was official conduct.
A list of unnamed coconspirators has been trimmed, and the phrase “private attorney” now describes the unindicted lawyers who allegedly helped Trump pressure officials to overturn results.
It also removes all references to Trump as the 45th President of the United States and instead refers to him as a “candidate for President.”
On the podcast, Wine-Banks added that, following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Smith may struggle to establish that any conversations Trump had with Pence and White House staff about the election were not official conduct.
“In part that relies on because they were about the election and his role as a candidate, and so some of this is really tricky, not just because of being sensitive and therefore redacted, but because it goes to the heart of whether it is immune conduct or not,” Wine-Banks said.
