Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys and Special Counsel Jack Smith will appear Thursday morning in federal court as the case over Trump trying to overturn the 2020 election resumes following a months-long pause, with U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan expected to determine how the case will move forward—and how much will happen before the election.
Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom for his trial for allegedly covering up hush ... [+]
Trump has been charged on four felony counts based on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and prosecutors filed an updated indictment last week—with the same four charges but some slimmed-down details—after the Supreme Court gave the ex-president some immunity from criminal prosecution for any “official acts” he took while in office.
The case has been on pause in district court since December while the Supreme Court has determined the immunity issue, and Chutkan will now have to determine which of the allegations in the updated indictment are not covered by immunity and can be prosecuted before the case can go to trial.
The judge is holding a hearing Thursday after prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers submitted a status report on Friday proposing how the case should go forward.
Smith proposed a speedier timeline—though he ultimately said any timing should be up to Chutkan to decide—while Trump’s lawyers sought to drag out the case, with any decision on Trump’s immunity bumped back until after the election.
It’s unclear if Chutkan will rule from the bench Thursday on what the schedule should be or issue a ruling at some later point.
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No. However Chutkan rules based on Thursday’s ruling, it’s certain the case won’t go to trial before Election Day. Even if the judge does rule before then on what Trump can be charged with based on the immunity ruling, Trump is expected to then appeal that ruling—possibly all the way up to the Supreme Court—which will drag out the case again before it can go to trial. With two months to go before the election, it wouldn’t even matter if Trump didn’t appeal any immunity ruling, because Chutkan has previously suggested it will take about four months before the case can go to trial once the immunity concerns are out of the way, given other pretrial motions that still have to be dealt with. Smith has proposed submitting some of those while the immunity issue is also playing out, which could shorten the timing somewhat, but not enough for there to be a trial by November.
Though the case won’t go to trial before the election, the public may learn some interesting information before then in any case. Smith has asked the judge to file a motion laying out how the new indictment complies with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, which he said will include “additional unpled categories of evidence that the Government intends to introduce at trial.” That means there might be new revelations about Trump’s post-election activities that haven’t previously been made public.
Since there won’t be a trial before the election, the fate of the criminal case will be determined by whether Trump wins. If he loses, the case will proceed to trial as normal, but if Trump takes back the White House, it’s expected that Trump would appoint officials to the Justice Department who would have the charges against him dropped.
Tump has heavily protested the federal election case moving forward in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, after already decrying the charges against him as a “witch hunt” designed to harm his presidential campaign. The ex-president complained about the updated indictment in a series of posts on Truth Social last week, saying the “ridiculous new Indictment ... has all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY.” “This is merely an attempt to INTERFERE WITH THE ELECTION,” Trump wrote, going on to claim “the whole case should be thrown out and dismissed on Presidential Immunity grounds.”
The federal election case is one of four criminal cases brought against Trump, with the ex-president facing felony counts of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. Trump was first indicted in August 2023, and the case was initially scheduled to go to trial in March before the immunity dispute pushed it back. The ex-president sought to dismiss the charges against him by claiming he has “presidential immunity”—an argument he’s made in many of his civil and criminal cases—but while Chutkan and a panel of appeals judges ruled against him, the Supreme Court was more sympathetic. Justices ruled 6-3 that Trump and other ex-presidents have criminal immunity for “official acts” they took while in office. There is no immunity for “unofficial” acts that fall outside the scope of a president’s duties. Smith’s updated indictment revises the government’s allegations against Trump in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling. While the charges all stayed the same, prosecutors removed some specific allegations of how Trump unlawfully tried to overturn the election—namely by pressuring DOJ officials to challenge the results, which the Supreme Court ruled was an official act. The indictment also makes small changes to its language to emphasize that prosecutors believe Trump was acting as a candidate and private citizen in his efforts to overturn the election, not as president.