Judge Tanya Chutkan

 

Judge Tanya Chutkan received clearance from the appellate courts to get back to work in the Special Counsel’s election interference case in Washington, D.C. 

She did not waste any time. As of late afternoon yesterday, PACER, the federal courts’ case management system reflected that Judge Chutkan filed two orders and one opinion on Saturday in the federal election interference case.

First, she denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the entire case on presidential immunity grounds. She also directed the parties to file a joint status report by August 9, not even a week away, and she set a scheduling conference for the following week on August 16 at 10 a.m.

She also denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment on statutory grounds without prejudice, which we took a look at back in November of 2023. He can refile it if he wishes to after she is finished with the immunity issue.

Joint status reports can prove tricky when Donald Trump is a party to a case. In most criminal cases, prosecutors and defense lawyers get together to produce a document that clarifies the issues that need to be resolved before the case can get to a plea or a trial.

If there are areas of disagreement, they outline them, typically in a civil fashion. But Trump’s lawyers, perhaps trying to appease their audience of one, can be uncooperative and use political invective to castigate prosecutors in pleadings. While that sort of behavior was well received, even frequently adopted as the court’s position, by Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida, this is a different courtroom.

-Joyce Vance