US District Judge Tanya Chutkan theorized that former President Donald Trump could still be responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, ransacking of the Capitol — even if he didn’t direct the rioters to wreak havoc.
In a lengthy ruling Wednesday in which she rebuffed most of Trump attorney’s requests for discovery in his 2020 election subversion case, Chutkan, 62, swatted down concerns about potentially inconsistent statements from law enforcement as to whether the former president was responsible.
“It is entirely conceivable, for instance, that Defendant could share responsibility for the events of January 6 without such express authorization of rioters’ criminal actions,” she wrote in a 50-page ruling.
Trump’s legal team cited other court cases against Capitol rioters, including one in which prosecutors noted they couldn’t “identify any remarks made by former President Trump that authorized that illegal conduct.”
His attorneys sought all documents pertaining to other prosecutors and law enforcement personnel suggesting that Trump, 78, may not have been responsible for the riot.
Chutkan rejected the request, contending that it wasn’t fully clear to her that other prosecutors contradicted special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments against Trump.
Her Wednesday ruling in the matter came as part of a broader opinion on an array of requests for discovery by Trump’s legal team.
Before the 2020 election subversion case had been put on ice last year amid a battle over whether or not Trump enjoyed presidential immunity, his legal team had put out an extensive motion to compel discovery.
Now that the case is back on track — for now — Chutkan revisited it.
Another key plea from Trump’s team that she rejected includes a request for documents related to foreign meddling in the 2020 election.
“Whether Defendant sought to undermine public confidence in the election to legitimize or otherwise further his criminal conspiracies does not depend on whether other nations also tried to achieve similar results for their own purposes,” she ruled.
Notably, she ruled in Trump’s favor regarding a request for details about Vice President Mike Pence’s handling of an investigation into whether he mishandled classified documents.
The Justice Department last year informed Pence, 65, it would not be pursuing charges against him over the ordeal. Trump’s team argued it needed additional information about whether Pence’s dealings with the DOJ had an influence on his decision to testify before Smith’s probe.
“Defendant is correct that information suggesting a potential witness’s motives for implicating him may be material,” she concluded.
Coinciding with Chutkan’s ruling on discovery Wednesday, Smith’s team took aim at efforts by Trump’s attorneys to defang the election subversion indictment against him.
For nearly a year, Trump’s attorneys have forged ahead with its high-profile presidential immunity argument to sink the case against him — a legal showdown that went to the Supreme Court and remains ongoing.
But earlier this month, his attorneys furnished another key argument against prosecution, predicated on the Fischer v. United States case in which the high court ruling narrowed the scope of the obstruction of an official proceeding charge that is being used in two of the four counts against Trump.
Essentially, the Supreme Court determined that prosecutors needed to prove that rioters sought to tamper with or destroy documents in order to use that charge, which had been deployed in hundreds of cases.
On Wednesday, Smith’s office hit back.
His team highlighted Trump’s machinations to present a false slate of electors to Congress in his bid to overturn the 2020 election.
“The defendant’s supplement ignores entirely that the superseding indictment includes allegations that involve the creation of false evidence,” Smith’s team wrote in its rebuttal motion.
“The superseding indictment plainly alleges that the defendant willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C., and then directing them to march to the Capitol to pressure the Vice President and legislators to reject the legitimate certificates and instead rely on the fraudulent electoral certificates.”
Earlier this month, Trump’s team disputed that assertion and argued that Smith’s indictment “stretches generally applicable statutes beyond their breaking point based on false claims that President Trump is somehow responsible for events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Smith had lodged his superseding indictment against Trump on the election subversion case back in August, which recalibrated the charges to comport with the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.
The high court had ruled that presidents enjoy “absolute” criminal immunity for official actions but remanded the case back to the lower courts to determine whether or not that nixes the 2020 election subversion case against Trump.
Trump has seemingly been trying to stall proceedings as much as possible as he mounts his third White House bid. Should he prevail on Nov. 5, he will have more tools at his disposal against his federal charges.
The 45th president is facing a total of 14 pending criminal counts spanning the election subversion indictment and the 2020 election tampering case out of Georgia. He has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all of them.
