Arguing for a later trial, the former president’s counsel pointed to the infamously shoddy prosecution of Black teenagers falsely accused of rape in 1931. It didn’t go well.
Donald Trump lost big in federal court Monday when U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan set his federal election interference trial for March.
That’s a couple of months later than the government requested but a couple of years earlier than Trump requested. The simple math makes the former president’s loss obvious.
But a review of the hearing transcript suggests the government’s relative victory on Monday in Washington is even broader than the bottom-line takeaway of the March scheduling.
That’s because it shows Chutkan fundamentally disagreeing with Trump’s legal team at nearly every turn, which is just as bad a sign for Trump as the trial date itself, as his lawyers will attempt to persuade the Obama-appointed judge on key issues both ahead of and during the trial.
There are several moments that reflect Chutkan’s apparent lack of patience with the Trump camp’s protestations of injustice, but one particular exchange did well to highlight her view.
It came when the judge took stock of Team Trump’s citation of the landmark Powell v. Alabama case, also known as the Scottsboro Boys case. In 1931, several Black teenagers were infamously tried on charges of raping two white women just days after their indictments, without time to retain their chosen attorneys. The Supreme Court reversed their convictions.
In a filing ahead of Monday’s hearing, Trump’s lawyers quoted the Powell ruling, in which the high court said:
A defendant, charged with a serious crime, must not be stripped of his right to have sufficient time to advise with counsel and prepare his defense. To do that is not to proceed promptly in the calm spirit of regulated justice, but to go forward with the haste of the mob.
Chutkan, a former public defender, did not seem overly impressed with Trump’s invocation of that vaunted precedent. At Monday’s hearing, she noted that:
- The young Black defendants in that case “were met at Scottsboro by a large crowd and that the attitude of the community was one of great hostility.”
- Their trials “began six days after indictments.”
- The Supreme Court found “a clear denial of due process because the trial court failed to give the defendants reasonable time and opportunity to secure counsel and the defendants were incapable of adequately making their own defense.”
That led Chutkan to reach the easy conclusion that Trump’s case, “for any number of reasons, is profoundly different from Powell.”
On the contrary, she observed, the former president “is represented by a team of zealous, experienced attorneys and has the resources necessary to efficiently review the discovery and investigate.”
The judge further explained that she has seen “many cases unduly delayed because a defendant lacks adequate representation or cannot properly review discovery because they are detained. That is not the case here.”
A March trial timeline in Trump’s case, Chutkan said, “does not move the case forward with the haste of the mob.”
Put differently, and as reflected in the overall tenor of Monday’s hearing, the judge told Trump’s lawyers to buck up, stop complaining and start preparing, because their client’s situation is nothing like cases of actual injustice.
