Judge Tanya Chutkan chews up Donald Trump’s defense attorneys and spits them out during criminal trial hearing
Now that the Supreme Court has made its immunity ruling, Donald Trump’s criminal trial with Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington DC is back on again. Jack Smith has filed a superseding indictment against Trump in the case, and a pretrial hearing took place today to determine how to move forward. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s defense attorneys threw everything at the wall they could think of. Also unsurprisingly, the judge threw it back at them.
At one point today Trump’s defense attorneys tried to use the 2024 election as an excuse for delaying the trial proceedings. But Judge Chutkan flatly said “This court is not concerned about the election schedule” and that the election “is not relevant here.” Trump’s attorneys also tried to get the Mike Pence aspect of Trump’s election crimes thrown out, but Judge Chutkan said that if the Supreme Court wanted that part of the case thrown out, they’d have thrown it out, and instead “they sent it back to me.”
Judge Chutkan ended up giving Trump’s attorneys a three week deadline to make a filing before she moves forward with the case. When they argued that it wasn’t enough time, she shot them down on that as well. The bottom line: Judge Chutkan has no intention of letting Trump delay these criminal trial proceedings no matter what excuse he comes up with. Trump will now have to spend the rest of the election cycle dealing with pretrial activities in Washington DC. If he doesn’t like it, too bad.
