by The federal judge overseeing the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election issued an order Friday vacating the March 4 trial date for the case.
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s order was a formal confirmation of what had seemed fairly obvious for weeks. It came after she had given a series of hints that she was delaying the trial while Trump tries to have the underlying charges dismissed on the grounds that she enjoys complete immunity from prosecution.
In her order, Judge Chutkan said she would set a new date for the proceeding in Federal District Court in Washington “if and when” Trump’s immunity claims are resolved.
The immunity claims are now before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has been mulling over the issue since oral arguments were heard on Jan. 9. The panel, which expressed skepticism about Trump’s position, has yet to issue a decision after setting an extremely aggressive timeline for reporting.
Judge Chutkan’s decision to delay the trial was the latest twist in an ongoing and often bitter fight between Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith over the timing of the proceedings.
Trump’s legal team has used every lever at its disposal to delay the start of the trial until after this fall’s election is decided.
If that happened and Trump won the race, he could order his attorney general to simply dismiss the charges. And even if the indictment were to stand, proceedings against him could be frozen while he is in office, under a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Prosecutors have never explicitly said they want to hold the trial before the election to avoid possible consequences. Instead, they have framed their efforts to move the case quickly toward trial as a nod to the enormous public interest in seeing the former president’s case resolved quickly.
Still, they have done everything they can to move the process forward; At one point, they made an unusual request to the Supreme Court to preempt the appeals court and decide the immunity question on an expedited basis.
The appeal process began in December after Judge Chutkan rejected a broad effort by Trump’s lawyers to have the election subversion case dismissed because the charges arose from actions Trump took while in the White House. After the former president asked the appeals court to intervene and overturn Judge Chutkan’s ruling, she stayed all proceedings in the underlying case until the issue was resolved.
The decision to postpone the March 4 date means Trump’s trial on state charges in New York of helping arrange hush payments for a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 election may now become the first. of the four criminal trials of the former president. cases to present before a jury.
That trial, scheduled to begin in Manhattan on March 25, has been moving forward slowly. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has begun reaching out to witnesses to prepare them for the proceedings, including Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s former fixer.
Still, it is not entirely certain that the hush money trial in New York will begin before the election subversion trial in Washington. Judge Juan M. Merchán, who is overseeing the hush money case, has set a hearing for February 15 to determine the timing of his trial.
But if Trump’s appeal on the immunity issue is resolved quickly and Judge Chutkan sets a new trial date in Washington for late April or early May, it is possible that Judge Merchan could step aside and let the case of electoral subversion happens first.
The Supreme Court is likely to play a decisive role in determining the timing of both trials, assuming the defense or prosecution asks it to review the appeals court’s eventual ruling on immunity.
If the justices refuse to hear the case and let the appeals court ruling stand, the matter will immediately return to Judge Chutkan, who has shown a penchant for acting quickly.
If the judges accept the appeal and hear and decide it quickly, the election case could go to trial this summer. But if the court follows a leisurely pace in considering the immunity question, Judge Chutkan may not be able to schedule it before Election Day, especially given the complexities of putting Trump on trial in the middle of the general election season.
