Trump lawyers request date for protective order hearing – while completely ignoring judge’s instructions
Donald Trump’s lawyers appeared to ignore the judge’s orders in their latest filing in the case related to the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
US Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith and the Trump defence team submitted their suggestions for when a hearing may be held on prosecutors’ proposed “protective order” to restrict what the former president can share about the case.
Judge Tanya Chutkan requested a hearing date between 9 and 11 August. The special counsel said his team would be available on any of those days while Mr Trump’s team ignored the judge’s order and suggested 14 or 15 August.
On Tuesday, the judge ultimately set a hearing date for 10am ET on 11 August.
In a filing on Monday night, the special counsel’s office wrote that Mr Trump was attempting to “litigate this case in the media”.
This came after Mr Trump objected to the proposal that public discussion of the discovery evidence in the case be restricted.
“The defendant’s principal objection to it – as defense counsel stated publicly yesterday, and in conference with Government counsel – is that it would not permit the defendant or his counsel to publicly disseminate, and publicize in the media, various materials obtained from the Government in discovery,” the office wrote. “But there is no right to publicly release discovery material, because the discovery process is designed to ensure a fair process before the Court, not to provide the defendant an opportunity to improperly press his case in the court of public opinion.”
The filing came shortly after Mr Trump’s attorneys requested that the judge in charge of the case give permission to the former president to use large parts of the discovery materials while campaigning for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
Over the course of 13 pages, the attorneys responded to the government’s motion for a protective order banning Mr Trump from sharing any of the material that is set to be handed over by the prosecution during the pre-trial discovery process.
Mr Trump faces three criminal conspiracy charges and a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding.
The defence lawyers argued that the standard protective order would mean that the judge would be able to “censor” Mr Trump and put in place “content-based restrictions” on his “political speech”.
Prosecutors pointed to Mr Trump’s frequent “public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him,” including insults and attacks lobbed at the prosecutors and judges overseeing other criminal cases and investigations in New York and Georgia.
They had asked the judge to impose an order barring Mr Trump from sharing discovery materials “directly or indirectly to any person or entity other than persons employed to assist in the defense, persons who are interviewed as potential witnesses, counsel for potential witnesses, and other persons to whom the Court may authorize disclosure”.
