In a new filing with federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, the federal prosecutors handling a case against former President Donald Trump that alleges multiple conspiracies targeting results from the last presidential election ask for a series of restrictions on statements that Trump’s team can make before jurors. While doing so, the prosecutors again deride Trump’s prior claims that he should be shielded by the supposed reach of protections from the First Amendment.
Remarks made by Trump are part of the alleged conspiracies, but Chutkan already determined that there is ample legal precedent for including actions that amount to speech — meaning the utterance of a communication — in criminal proceedings if other circumstances (that she found to be present here) were accompanying. The filing from Smith argued for blocking from the jury arguments unrelated to the straightforward questions under the relevant legal standards of guilt or innocence of specific accusations. In other words, effectively turning the litigation over to political arguments from Trump or claims around the legal foundation for the case already handled in earlier proceedings should be a no-go, they said.
“The Court properly denied defense motions predicated on these claims,” prosecutors said of contentions including protection by the First Amendment. “The defendant should not be permitted to make legal arguments like these to the jury. […] Any attempt to suggest or argue to the jury that it should acquit based on principles of immunity or the First Amendment would usurp the Court’s role to decide legal issues and invite impermissible jury nullification.”
The immunity arguments — meaning claims from Trump that he should be shielded from prosecution by virtue of legal protections supposedly originating with him occupying the presidency at all — are at an appeals court in D.C. Following conclusions there, appeals by the losing side to the U.S. Supreme Court seem likely. The higher court denied requests from federal prosecutors for an earlier intervention to speed up the process towards resolution.
