The judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s election case in Washington has issued several orders this week. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to return the case to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last month, she must now decide the next steps. The case had been on hold for about seven months while Trump appealed, contending that he should be granted immunity from prosecution.
While Chutkan denied a Trump team request last week to dismiss the case on the grounds of selective prosecution, a former U.S. attorney said that the high court’s ruling is not good at all for special counsel Jack Smith, who initially brought the felony charges against Trump for allegedly ‘interfering’ in the 2020 election and obstructing an official proceeding. Following the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling that presidents have immunity for their official acts, Judge Chutkan will need to assess which actions taken by Trump after the 2020 election fall outside this immunity and are thus subject to prosecution.
Joyce Vance, the former U.S. attorney, suggested that prosecutors in the election case have not “made much progress” and are “back at square one” following the Supreme Court decision. The reason why is that Smith will now be forced to “reconsider the charges and allegations in his indictment and the evidence he can use to support them,” she wrote for the left-leaning Brennan Center nonprofit. Smith’s team may have to “alter or delete some of the four crimes” that they charged Trump with, along with accompanying evidence and allegations to support their charges, she added.
Last month, Trump attorney Todd Blanche suggested to radio host Hugh Hewitt that the judge should delay the case until after the November election. The interview took place just days after the former president narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“[There are] a lot of others out there that want, still want, nothing more than to see President Trump go down before the election. And that’s not who we are as a country. That’s not the way the justice system is supposed to work. That’s not the way it’s ever worked before. And we can still right this ship,” Blanche said. He added that those who want to defeat Trump should “take your message to the voters and tell them to vote. You should not use the court system.”
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Also in July, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Smith’s classified documents case against Trump, not because of the Supreme Court’s ruling, but because she believes Smith and Joe Biden’s Justice Department is selectively prosecuting Trump. He was charged with allegedly mishandling classified documents but Presidents Bill Clinton and Joe Biden were never charged for having classified materials in their possession after they left office (Biden as a senator). Likewise, former Vice President Mike Pence also was not charged for having classified documents in his possession.
