Judge Tanya Chutkan, in charge of the case against Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to alter the result of the 2020 elections, has rejected the former president’s request to speak publicly about the evidence and witnesses in the process. She has also warned the incumbent Republican presidential candidate that he will take “steps” to prevent the magnate from intimidating trial participants or influencing potential jurors.
Chutkan had convened a hearing in Washington this Friday to determine the imposition of summary secrecy on the case. Special counsel Jack Smith, who has indicted the former president on four charges related to the great 2020 election hoax, had asked for that restriction last week as a matter of course. But less routinely, he had specifically cited Trump’s comments on social media to warn of the former president trying to intimidate witnesses. Specifically, Smith alluded to a text in which the tycoon warned that “if you come against me, I will go against you.” A spokesperson for the former leader clarified that the text on Trump’s social network, Truth, referred to the political opponents of the current presidential candidate.
In turn, Trump’s defense lawyers had requested that exceptions be considered in the secrecy of the summary and that this measure only be imposed on the “sensitive” evidence that was going to be presented at trial. The former president’s legal team argued the right to free expression of his client, protected in the first amendment of the national Constitution.
In the ninety-minute hearing, the judge accepted the former president’s argument that “like any other American” he has the right to express his opinion, but warned him that his freedom of expression “is not absolute.”
“I want to issue a few words of caution. I intend to ensure that justice is done in this case as it would in any other case, and even possibly ambiguous statements by the defendant or his advocates” can be taken as an attempt to “intimidate witnesses or influence potential witnesses.”
In that case, he maintains, his court would take action. “I warn you to be especially careful in your statements in this case,” he added, “I will take all necessary measures to protect the integrity of this process.”
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The special counsel has proposed a speedy trial for a case in which Trump is accused of conspiring to defraud the government, and to deprive citizens of their civil rights, obstruction of legal process and witness tampering. Smith intends for the process to begin on January 2, at the start of the primary elections.
If that date is confirmed, this trial would be the first of the three that the former president has pending on charges related to his term and political career. In New York he is accused of manipulation of accounting data in relation to the payment to a porn actress to hide an alleged sexual relationship. In Miami, in a case also investigated by Jack Smith, he is suspected of illegally withholding classified material from him after leaving office, in violation of espionage law.
But Trump, who is trying to obtain political gain from his legal problems and present himself as a victim who is persecuted by an extremist government for defending his voters, prefers to extend the deadlines. His legal team maintains that holding a trial in the middle of the campaign for the presidential elections in November would amount to political interference. These lawyers must now submit their own proposed date for hearings to begin and an estimate of how long the process might take.
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