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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Trump’s lawyer and judge in federal election case clash in the first hearing since immunity ruling

by

327 days ago
20240905
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump participates in a town hall with FOX News host Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump participates in a town hall with FOX News host Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Evan Vucci

In the first court hear­ing in near­ly a year, a lawyer for Don­ald Trump clashed on Thurs­day with the judge in the fed­er­al elec­tion in­ter­fer­ence pros­e­cu­tion of the for­mer pres­i­dent af­ter sug­gest­ing the gov­ern­ment was rush­ing for­ward with an “il­le­git­i­mate” in­dict­ment at the height of the White House cam­paign.

Pros­e­cu­tors and de­fense lawyers are bit­ter­ly at odds over the next steps in the case af­ter the Supreme Court nar­rowed the scope of the pros­e­cu­tion by rul­ing that for­mer pres­i­dents are en­ti­tled to broad im­mu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal charges. The du­elling pro­pos­als and testy court­room ex­changes re­flect­ed the ex­tent to which the jus­tices’ Ju­ly opin­ion had up­end­ed the path of the case that charges Trump with plot­ting to over­turn the re­sults of the 2020 elec­tion in the run-up to the Capi­tol ri­ot on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021.

“We may be deal­ing with an il­le­git­i­mate in­dict­ment from the get-go,” Trump at­tor­ney John Lau­ro said.

He added: “We want an or­der­ly process that does jus­tice to the Supreme Court opin­ion.”

Spe­cial coun­sel Jack Smith’s team filed a re­vised in­dict­ment last week to strip out cer­tain al­le­ga­tions against Trump for which the Supreme Court said Trump, the Re­pub­li­can nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent, en­joyed im­mu­ni­ty. De­fense lawyers, how­ev­er, be­lieve that that in­dict­ment did not ful­ly com­ply with the jus­tices’ rul­ing.

Lau­ro told U.S. Dis­trict Judge Tanya Chutkan that the Supreme Court’s opin­ion re­quired the out­right dis­missal of the case, a po­si­tion the judge made clear she did not ac­cept. He com­plained that pros­e­cu­tors were show­ing a “rush to judg­ment” with their plans to soon file court pa­pers ex­plain­ing why the re­main­ing al­le­ga­tions should re­main in­tact.

Chutkan was un­moved on that point as well.

“This case has been pend­ing for over a year,” Chutkan said, ref­er­enc­ing the fact that the mat­ter has been frozen since last De­cem­ber while Trump pur­sued his im­mu­ni­ty ap­peal. “We’re hard­ly sprint­ing to the fin­ish here.”

She said it was clear that what­ev­er her rul­ing, it would be sub­ject to a fur­ther ap­peal.

She al­so bris­tled at Lau­ro’s ref­er­ence to the No­vem­ber elec­tion, such as when he said: “This process is in­her­ent­ly un­fair, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing this sen­si­tive time.”

“I un­der­stand that there is an elec­tion,” the judge replied. “I’ve said be­fore … that the elec­toral process and the tim­ing of the elec­tion … is not rel­e­vant here. The court is not con­cerned with the elec­toral sched­ule.”

Lau­ro told Chutkan that the case con­cerned mo­men­tous is­sues. “We are talk­ing about the pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed States,” he said.

Chutkan shot back: “I’m not talk­ing about the pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed States. I’m talk­ing about a four-count in­dict­ment.”

She told Lau­ro that it ap­peared the de­fense was try­ing to de­lay the case be­cause of the elec­tion. “That’s not go­ing to be a fac­tor I con­sid­er at all,” Chutkan said.

Push­ing back on the de­fense’s claims that the spe­cial coun­sel wants to move too quick­ly, a mem­ber of Smith’s pros­e­cu­tion team not­ed that Trump’s lawyers filed a lengthy brief seek­ing to over­turn his New York hush mon­ey con­vic­tion and dis­miss the case less than two weeks af­ter the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Ju­ly.

“The de­fense can move com­pre­hen­sive­ly, quick­ly and well. So can we,” Thomas Win­dom said.

The tense ex­changes be­tween Lau­ro and Chutkan de­fined the ear­ly hear­ings in the case. But there was a lighter start to Thurs­day’s ses­sion.

At the open­ing, Chutkan not­ed that it has been al­most a year since she saw the lawyers in her court­room. Lau­ro joked to the judge that “life was al­most mean­ing­less with­out see­ing you.”

“En­joy it while it lasts,” Chutkan said.

The hear­ing end­ed with­out the judge is­su­ing an or­der about fu­ture dates in the case.

Trump was not in the court­room and gave an eco­nom­ic speech in New York. A not guilty plea was en­tered on his be­half for the re­vised in­dict­ment.

De­fense lawyers said they in­tend to file mul­ti­ple mo­tions to dis­miss the case, in­clud­ing one that pig­gy­backs off a Flori­da judge’s rul­ing that said Smith’s ap­point­ment was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Nei­ther side en­vi­sions a tri­al hap­pen­ing be­fore Elec­tion Day, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the amount of work ahead. Chutkan is tasked with de­ter­min­ing which of the acts al­leged in the in­dict­ment can re­main part of the case in light of the Supreme Court opin­ion.

The jus­tices in Ju­ly ruled that for­mer pres­i­dents en­joy ab­solute im­mu­ni­ty for the ex­er­cise of their core con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ties and are pre­sump­tive­ly im­mune from pros­e­cu­tion for all oth­er of­fi­cial acts.

Smith’s team re­spond­ed to the rul­ing with a re­vised in­dict­ment last week that re­moved ref­er­ences to Trump’s ef­forts to use the law en­force­ment pow­ers of the Jus­tice De­part­ment to re­main in pow­er, an area of con­duct to which the Supreme Court said Trump is im­mune.

The case is one of two fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tions against Trump. The oth­er, charg­ing him with il­le­gal­ly hoard­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments at his Mar-a-La­go es­tate in Palm Beach, Flori­da, was dis­missed in Ju­ly by U.S. Dis­trict Judge Aileen Can­non. She said Smith’s ap­point­ment as spe­cial coun­sel was un­law­ful.

Smith’s team has ap­pealed that rul­ing. Trump’s lawyers say they in­tend to ask Chutkan to dis­miss the elec­tion case on the same grounds. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by ER­IC TUCK­ER, ALAN­NA DURKIN RICH­ER and MICHAEL KUN­ZEL­MAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press


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