DC Judge Fast-Tracks ‘Huge’ Trump Case to Trial
News Analysis
Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan has set a particularly tight trial date in the District of Columbia case against former President Donald Trump, according to several lawyers.
The case targeting President Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results should go to trial on March 4, the judge ruled on Aug. 28. That’s two months later than proposed by the prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith, but more than two years earlier than the defense asked for.
The prosecutors argued that there’s an “exceedingly and unprecedentedly strong” public interest in speedily resolving the case, but also acknowledged that “there’s also a strong public interest in a fair trial,” which includes giving the defense enough time to prepare.
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“It is certainly an aggressive timeframe. I did not think she was going to set a trial date that soon,” John Malcolm, a former federal prosecutor now vice president of The Institute for Constitutional Government, commented to The Epoch Times.
Leslie McAdoo Gordon, a defense attorney and legal analyst, called the schedule for the trial and pre-trial proceedings “disgraceful.”
“These dates are patently ridiculous & constitute a violation of his 6th Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel,” she said in an X post.
The case, brought by Mr. Smith on Aug. 1, alleges that President Trump didn’t genuinely believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that his attempts to challenge the results constituted several crimes, including a conspiracy to obstruct the collection and counting of electoral votes as well as a conspiracy against Americans’ right to vote.
President Trump’s lawyers argued they needed years to prepare for the trial to review the nearly 13 million documents and files handed to them by the prosecutors as part of the discovery process.
“Not only do we have to review this material, we have to absorb it,” President Trump’s lawyer John Lauro said during an Aug. 28 court hearing, shortly before the judge made her decision.
In addition, the defense plans to challenge the charges from multiple angles.
The lawyers believe that President Trump acted “within the outer perimeter” of his duties when he challenged the election results and is thus protected from prosecution by executive immunity. They also plan to allege selective prosecution based on the fact that the charges were produced by the Biden administration and President Joe Biden is running for reelection against President Trump. They also argue that Mr. Smith is using criminal laws in a novel way that may not be permissible, Mr. Lauro outlined.
“This is one of the most unique cases from a legal perspective ever brought in the history of the United States,” he said.
Particularly the executive immunity argument will “have to be litigated likely through the appellate process, potentially up to the Supreme Court,” Will Scharf, a former federal prosecutor, told The Epoch Times.
New Info or Not?
The prosecutors tried to downplay the volume of the discovery, explaining that almost 8 million pages of the material were duplicative or were available to President Trump before the charges were filed, including documents from the National Archives, from his 2020 campaign and political action committees as well as public materials, such as those produced by the congressional January 6 committee.
The judge signed on the argument, noting that “that’s not brand-new information” to the defense.
Mr. Lauro disagreed.
“To a criminal defense lawyer, it’s brand-new information,” he said.
“It would be a miscarriage of justice if a lawyer were expected to absorb all the information that a client already knew and not look at it anew and not look at it from the perspective of a criminal defense,” he said.
Mr. Lauro also pointed out that he was only hired a month and half ago.
The judge argued, however, that other lawyers of President Trump’s have likely already reviewed the materials.
She acknowledged that defendants have no obligation to prepare for a trial before any charges are filed, but noted that a “good defense attorney” would do so.
Review How?
About 5 million pages fall to the category of documents the prosecutors are “really taking about” as information that wasn’t already available to President Trump’s team, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston during the hearing.
Even that would amount to more than 25,000 pages the defense would have to review every day before the trial.
It’s difficult to gauge the time needed to review the documents, Mr. Malcolm pointed out, without knowing “the nature of the evidence.” Reviewing one full page of text is much different than reviewing a page that only contains a few short email or text messages.
The prosecutors didn’t go into all such details. They mentioned over 58,000 pages come witness interview files, including transcripts.
In an Aug. 21 court filing on the matter, they argued it’s a “faulty assertion that it is necessary for a lawyer to conduct a page-by-page review of discovery for a defendant to receive a fair trial.”
Mr. Malcolm disagreed.
“If you provide it to a defense attorney as part of discovery then a defense lawyer has to review it and he’s got to be able to talk to his client about it,” he said.
Mr. Scharf concurred.
“If they’re turning over all of that information, they see some relevance in all of those documents. Presumably, the defense might as well,” he said.
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