Judge rejects Trump’s motion to dismiss Jan. 6 case

A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment against him for his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot on selective and vindictive prosecution grounds.

Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case — he claimed that the Biden administration pursued the case to keep him from returning to the White House next year — in a 16-page ruling Saturday. She wrote that he “proffered no meaningful evidence … nor has he given any explanation of how a hearing would produce material evidence to support his claims.” One day earlier, the Supreme Court returned the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which sent it back down to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The case had been on hold for months, with Chutkan refusing to schedule a trial until the Supreme Court ruled on Trump’s claim that presidents should enjoy immunity from prosecution. The high court determined last month that presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” and “presumptive immunity” for all official acts.

With the case being returned to Chutkan on Friday, she finally addressed a motion to dismiss the case from Trump’s defense team filed in October 2023. The judge found that the government neither selectively nor vindictively prosecuted the former president.

“​​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,” Chutkan wrote.

Trump’s team cited two articles, one in the New York Times and another in the Washington Post, that it claimed demonstrated evidence that President Joe Biden and special counsel Jack Smith “launched this prosecution to prevent him from becoming ‘the next President again.’” Anonymous sources in the New York Times story said Biden “privately commented on one occasion that he believed President Trump should be prosecuted, and on one separate occasion that he wished the Attorney General would act ‘more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.’”

“But there is no indication that President Biden ever expressed any such comments to the Attorney General or the Justice Department, much less that such comments actually resulted in politically motivated action,” Chutkan wrote.

Trump also argued he was charged in the Jan. 6 case because he pleaded not guilty to charges in his Florida-based classified documents case. 

“If vindictiveness could be established by new charges following a not guilty plea or a defendant’s public criticism of the prosecution, then defendants could effectively immunize themselves from superseding indictments by taking such action,” Chutkan wrote. “That cannot be the law.”

Before denying the motion to dismiss the case, Chutkan set an Aug. 16 date for prosecuting and defense attorneys to return to Washington to resume pretrial proceedings. Trump himself is not required to be present on that day.

The legal developments come just over three months before his general election against Vice President Kamala Harris, who officially became the Democratic presidential nominee Friday.