U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan partially sided with Donald Trump on Thursday to limit what special counsel Jack Smith can do in his election interference case against the former president.
Trump’s attorneys filed a motion earlier this month calling on Chutkan to hold Smith in contempt for continuing to make filings in the case, which the judge had placed a stay order on in December.
Trump has appealed to the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals over whether presidential immunity applies to charges Smith has brought against him.
Smith tried unsuccessfully late last month to get the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the matter to expedite the appeal, but the Court denied the request, so the review will proceed through the normal process.
Despite Chutkan’s Dec. 13 order staying proceedings at the federal court level, Trump’s filing said Smith’s office served him with 4,000 pages of “additional discovery” on Dec. 17, including what the prosecutors’ production letter described as “several hundred video and audio recordings.”
Trump attorneys requested that all Smith’s discovery requests be withdrawn and that prosecutors be required to obtain permission from the court before submitting any filings “to ensure that any further attempts to violate the Stay Order will be summarily denied.”
In her Thursday order, Chutkan sided with Trump, writing, “The court agrees … diligent defense counsel will need to conduct a preliminary review of each substantive motion the Government files in order to know whether they need to take further action. While that is not a major burden, it is a cognizable one.”
“Accordingly, the court will adopt Defendant’s recommendation that the parties be forbidden from filing any further substantive pretrial motions without first seeking leave from the court.”
“Any such motion for leave to file shall state whether the proposed motion is ancillary to the pending appeal and so requires a timely response or other action before the mandate is returned,” she added.
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