Judge in Trump election case directs prosecutors to turn over info related to Pence documents probe
WASHINGTON — The federal judge who oversees the election interference case against Donald Trump Prosecutors were ordered Wednesday to seek and provide information from the Justice Department to the former president’s attorneys related to a separate investigation Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents.
Trump’s lawyers had argued that that information could be relevant to their defense insofar as it shows that Pence, Trump’s vice president, had “an incentive to curry favor with authorities” and implicate Trump , while facing his own investigation into the keeping of secret documents in prison. his home in Indiana.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has said it was not involved in the Pence investigation and has “no discoverable information” about the case “beyond what has been publicly reported.” But U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Smith’s team to find and produce additional documents about the investigation, noting that attorneys have the right to cite evidence of a witness’s unwarranted conduct as a way to question the credibility of to undermine that witness.
“Defendant is correct in stating that information suggesting a potential witness’s motives for implicating him may be material,” Chutkan wrote.
However, the judge’s order largely rejected the categories of evidence that Trump had requested from prosecutors, saying his lawyers had failed to argue that the information was relevant to his defense against charges that he illegally plotted to testify the results of to overturn the 2020 presidential election. .
That includes a wide range of documents related to those elections and the January 6, 2021, riot, including information regarding security at the Capitol and any details about undercover government agents who may have been there.
Trump also unsuccessfully sought a full version of the US intelligence community’s assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election, as well as information on foreign actors’ efforts to influence the 2020 election to support the defense’s argument that “Trump and others acted appropriately.” even if certain reports were ultimately determined to be inaccurate.”
But the judge said details about foreign entities trying to influence the American public in 2020 had no bearing on the current case.
“Whether the defendant sought to undermine public confidence in the elections to legitimize or otherwise further his criminal conspiracies does not depend on whether other countries also sought to achieve similar results for their own purposes,” the judge wrote .
Pence appeared before a grand jury investigation into Trump in April 2023 after a federal appeals court rejected an attempt by Trump’s lawyers to block his testimony on executive privilege grounds. In June, Justice Department officials informed his lawyers that he would not face criminal charges following the discovery months earlier of a dozen documents with classified markings in his home.
No evidence has ever emerged to suggest that Pence deliberately hid documents from the government or even knew they were in his home. So there was never any expectation that he would be charged.
The two other pieces of information Chutkan ordered prosecutors to provide relate to any details Pence received during a meeting with military officials about security measures to be taken at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and information provided to Trump’s chief executive national intelligence review before he was interviewed by prosecutors.
It’s unclear when or even if the election interference case will go to trial in light of a July Supreme Court Opinion That granted former presidents broad immunity and narrowed the scope of the charges against Trump.
Chutkan is now tasked with determining which prosecutors’ claims against Trump can remain part of the case and which should be dismissed, a process that will almost certainly result in further appeals.
If Trump is elected, his new attorney general will likely demand the case be dismissed.
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Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington.