At a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Tanya Chutkan, the presiding judge, heard arguments from Mr. Trump’s attorneys and prosecutors in the special counsel’s office, Jack Smith, regarding the best way to handle the difficult task of deciding which charges in the indictment should be dropped due to the immunity decision and which should be kept and tried.
“A new trial date would be a pointless endeavor, according to Judge Chutkan, because of the immunity issue. It will be appealed all the way back to the Supreme Court, regardless of her decision,” the New York Times reported.
During a discussion on CNN, host Wolf Blitzer and network legal analyst Elie Honig spoke about the blockbuster development and what this could mean moving forward.
Below is a transcript of the exchange between Blitzer and Honig:
There‘s a trial and then the next update said, judge Chutkan said that would be futile to set a trial date now and both sides agree, you cannot set a trial date now, they still have to go through the appellate process and I think everyone, judge, and both parties agrees a trial date is well down the line is where she said we have to set a trial date that suggested to me, well, maybe things are moving more quickly than we assume. Yes. I did a double-take there is and how she going to set a trial date when they still have to go through these appeals.
Raising it to make sure the parties agreed. This is not the time to set a trial date. There is not a trial date. There will not be a trial day until at least after these appeals Paula Reid, you‘re there for us.
Session. So what happens next?
The judge to issue her schedule. It was a possibility that she could give some sort of scheduling dates today, but she needs to take some time. To review what he heard today and decide the path forward. She‘s made it clear that the first issue is going to be immunity. So she‘s asked to decide how she wants to proceed with that. Then I‘m gonna be southern questions of how does the Supreme Court‘s decision about obstruction of justice related to January 6? how does that apply here? She knows that the defense attorneys are going to try to litigate adelaide budgeted missy of the special counsel, but it does not appear that she‘s going to give a lot of weight to that argument. And then there are also these outstanding questions of discovery so right now we‘re going to start waiting to see what judge tanya chutkin says in terms of next steps, but it‘s clear, look, she‘s not going to completely concede to the defense and the way they want to proceed here. But it‘s really unclear how she‘s going to lay out this calendar. That number one goal though, for the Trump team heading into today, was to just try to delay any sort of substantive hearings until after the November election. It appears that that is probably how it‘s going to play out.
