WASHINGTON (CN) — The federal case against Donald Trump over his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election picked up speed Tuesday with Justice Department prosecutors and the former president's legal team ordered to sit down and determine a set of rules Trump and his lawyers must follow while reviewing reams of evidence prosecutors have gathered.
The judge's order to hold a hearing, scheduled for Friday, followed a heated back-and-forth over the weekend between special counsel Jack Smith’s office and Trump’s attorneys John Lauro and Todd Blanche over the terms of those rules.
Smith and his team proposed a protective order that would block Trump from sharing documents publicly, while Lauro requested narrower terms that would mark specific documents as sensitive and would allow “volunteer attorneys” access to them.
Both parties will have a chance to argue how materials like grand jury witness testimony, subpoena returns, transcripts, interview reports and other documents will be handled and who will be privy to them. Trump will not be in attendance.
Smith’s team filed a request on Aug. 4 to the Barack Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to limit access of such sensitive materials to just Trump, his defense counsel, people “employed to assist the defense” or the subject of a sensitive document.
Included in the filing was a screenshot of an ominous message Trump posted earlier in the day on his social media website Truth Social, writing, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston argued in the proposed order that Trump’s previous public statements on social media about people associated with the other cases he is a part of, like his posts about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, could have a “chilling effect” on potential witness testimony.
Trump is already under similar orders from New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in the state's criminal case against him for falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters. Trump is still allowed to speak publicly about that case but may not post evidence on social media, the judge said.
Lauro, of the firm Lauro & Singer, filed a response Monday evening blasting the Justice Department's proposed limitations, arguing they are overly broad and aim to censor the former president.
“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” Lauro wrote. “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations.”
He defended the former president’s Truth Social post as “generalized political speech” and a response to “the RINO, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and Super PACs, like the ones funded by the Koch Brothers and the Club for No Growth.” (RINO is a pejorative term used to refer to GOP members who are "Republican in Name Only.")
Lauro’s proposal aims to narrow the scope of what counts as sensitive material by excluding certain documents obtained outside the grand jury process and limiting that definition to documents with personally identifying information.
The legal fight is the first in Trump’s case after he pleaded not guilty on August 3 to four charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against the right to vote and have one’s vote counted and obstruction of an official proceeding.
Trump appeared for his third arraignment this year at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, just two blocks from the Capitol, where thousands of Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.
Ahead of Tuesday's developments Chutkan denied a request by Trump's team on Saturday to push its proposal filing deadline by an extra three days, which was also met with opposition by the Justice Department.
That weekend spat is a likely sign of what’s to come in the case, as prosecutors seek a speedy proceeding before the 2024 presidential election and the defense seeks to delay it so that, if Trump is elected, he can order his newly formed Justice Department to throw out the case or potentially pardon himself.
The dispute echoes one in Trump’s first set of federal charges, over his handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, weighed Smith’s request for a December trial as Trump’s team pushed for a post-election start date. Cannon decided to schedule the trial for May 2024.
Trump's New York trial, over charges of falsifying business records, is set for March 25, 2024.
Meanwhile in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating Trump over possible election interference related to a call Trump made in the aftermath of the 2020 election, where he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to find “11,780” votes, the number that would give him the state’s 16 electoral votes.
Willis has indicated that probe is wrapping up, telling reporters “the work is accomplished” and that she plans to announce the results of the probe before the end of the current court term on September 1.
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