Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday rejected a motion by former President Donald Trump to strike allegations that he helped lead the Jan. 6 attack from the indictment in his federal election interference case.
The Washington, D.C. district court judge said in a terse ruling that the references to the violent attack on the Capitol in the charging document would not prejudice a jury against Trump.
Chutkan vowed to take steps during jury selection and the trial itself to ensure jurors give Trump and prosecutors a fair shake.
“The court (will) examine and address the effects that pretrial publicity, including any generated by defendant, has had on the impartiality of potential jurors,” Chutkan wrote in a three-page order.
Separately, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron denied a request by Trump for a mistrial in the $250 million civil business fraud case against the former president and his adult children.
Engoron derided as “utterly without merit” Trump’s motion for a mistrial, which spotlighted unsubstantiated claims of political bias against the judge’s clerk among other issues,
“My rulings are mine, and mine alone,” wrote Engoron, who will determine how much Trump must pay in damages and if his company will be barred from doing business in New York.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment charges Trump with defrauding the United States, interfering with Congress and depriving people of their right to vote by leading a multi-pronged plot to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts via AP, File
Judge Tanya Chutkan (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts via AP)
One key allegation involves Trump’s riling up the crowd at his Jan. 6 rally to “fight like hell” to keep him in power. It accuses Trump of sitting on his hands for three-plus hours as the mob rampaged through the halls of Congress and even tweeted critical remarks about his then-Vice President Mike Pence as attackers hunted him down.
The judge snippily mentioned in her order that Trump’s own lawyers made prejudicial remarks in their filings like falsely claiming that President Biden ordered Trump’s prosecution.
Chutkan has set a March 4 trial date in the Trump case and has been briskly dealing with pre-trial legal disputes.
Her actions stand in stark contrast to the slow pace preferred by District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Trump’s trial in the federal case accusing him of mishandling hundreds of classified documents he took with him to his Mar-a-Lago resort home after leaving office.
Cannon has set a trial date in May for the documents case, which Trump derides as the “boxes hoax.” But she delayed key procedural hearings until March, a schedule that legal analysts say all but ensures the case will be delayed, most likely until after the November election.
It remains to be seen when Trump may face trial in the Manhattan criminal case stemming from hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels or the Georgia state election conspiracy case.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she expects the RICO trial to start sometime in the second half of 2024. She said it would likely continue through the presidential general election campaign next fall and only wrap up in early 2025.
The Chutkan ruling came hours after a new report quoted Trump boasting that he wanted to personally go to the Capitol to lead the violent riot by thousands of his extremist supporters.
Trump said he wasn’t just speaking euphemistically when he told a Jan. 6 rally that he planned to march with them to Capitol Hill, where they tried to physically block Congress from certifying President Biden’s win.
“No, I was going to (go to the Capitol), and then Secret Service said you can’t,” Trump told ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl in an interview for a new book.
Trump said he also wanted to go to the Capitol after he returned from the rally to the White House as the violence rages.
“I wanted to go back. I was thinking about going back,” Trump said.
The ex-president cryptically said he wanted to “stop the problem” at the Capitol, but didn’t elaborate.
The congressional Jan. 6 report detailed claims that Trump tried to force aides to take him to the Capitol from the rally, which was held at the Ellipse near the White House.
He’s never explained whether he would have sought to end the attack if he had gone to the Capitol — or hoped to lead the crowd in its insurrection effort.
