All posts tagged "Elections Case"

Donald Trump recently claimed immunity from prosecution in his federal election subversion case, but that argument is going nowhere, according to a former Watergate prosecutor on Thursday.

Assistant Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks during an appearance on MSNBC's The Beat With Ari Melber was asked about Trump's claim of presidential immunity, and whether it's valid.

Wine-Banks answered that he would have to be doing something "presidential, something within his job description."...

• The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 election conspiracy case shut down the former president’s legal team’s argument that Trump should be given more leeway to share evidence that will be used against him when his case goes to trial, legal analyst Lisa Rubin said.

Rubin during an appearance on MSNBC told host Alicia Menendez that Trump lawyer John Lauro argued unsuccessfully that the special counsel’s vast resources made his client a “David” in a battle against a legal Goliath.

Judge Tanya Chutkan largely rendered a split decision over the special counsel’s request for a protective order. Chutkan ruled that the protective order will only cover material that’s been designated as sensitive by the Justice Department, but sided with prosecutors in ruling that witness interviews and recordings be included as sensitive.

“So the people who can see documents that are marked as sensitive, Alicia, are people who are employed by Trump's team,” Rubin said. ...

District Judge Tanya Chutkan is treating former President Donald Trump like a "truant child" — and her orders and warnings reflect her own distrust that the former president will comply with what she is asking, argued former federal prosecutor Harry Litman on MSNBC Friday.

After a tough hearing this morning, Chutkan released a protective order that limits what Trump and prosecutors are allowed to disclose, including personally identifying information, witness testimony, sealed orders, and recordings and transcripts from witness interviews.

"I want to underline a part of this," said anchor Alicia Menendez, pointing specifically at Trump's post last week appearing to threaten prosecutors. "If they would be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses. Does Trump's post about, 'If you come after me, I'll come after you' — does that fly?"...

It's extremely difficult and challenging for an attorney to defend a loose-cannon client like Donald Trump, said the former president's previous lawyer Tim Parlatore on CNN Thursday evening.

This comes amid signs that John Lauro, the new lawyer brought in to defend Trump in the 2020 election case, already has differences with his new client on legal strategy.

"His lawyers would rather that he not speak as much as he does," said New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on the segment. "John Lauro, one of his lawyers who is handling the J6 case — and he was brought on in the last couple of months, but John Lauro gave a podcast interview where he was very clear that he does not agree with some of what the former president is saying on social media, among them, the former president was insisting we're going to file a motion asking for a recusal [of District Judge Tanya Chutkan]. And Lauro made clear, no, we have not made a decision on that at all. He also repeatedly talked about how you can't control some clients. This is not something any of them want. So they all work around it. And we've seen that over and over. But Trump is going to find out or not whether this is a problem for him. That's going to be up to judges."...