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Judge in Trump’s 2020 election case sides with special counsel on next steps after immunity ruling
Washington — The federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s case over the aftermath of the 2020 election laid out the schedule for next steps in the prosecution following the Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump enjoys immunity for “official acts” he took while in the White House.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued an order mostly siding with a timeline proposed by special counsel Jack Smith, hours after the two sides met in her courtroom earlier Thursday. Trump is charged with four counts related to his alleged efforts to overturn the election results, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges again, but waived his appearance before the court Thursday.
Chutkan’s order
The judge’s order rejects the schedule set out by Trump’s lawyers that would have extended pretrial proceedings into the spring or fall of 2025 — well after the November presidential election.
Smith and his team had pushed for discussions about immunity to take place alongside motions and other issues that the former president’s legal team is expected to raise.
Chutkan ordered federal prosecutors to turn over to Trump’s team all required evidence by Sept. 10, and gave Smith’s team until Sept. 26 to submit an opening brief presenting their arguments on presidential immunity. Smith’s prosecutors said in court Thursday that the immunity filing would include new information that was not included in the indictment. Chutkan’s order paves the way for that material to become public before November’s election.
The judge set an Oct. 17 deadline for Trump’s team to respond to the special counsel’s arguments and submit their own request to dismiss the indictment on immunity grounds. The government will then have until Oct. 29 to file its reply.
Chutkan wrote in her two-page order that once the filings on the immunity issue are submitted, she will decide whether additional proceedings are needed.
The judge also said a filing from Trump’s team that must be submitted by Sept. 19 should include “any specific evidence related to presidential immunity” that the former president believes prosecutors improperly withheld.
The order also states Trump has until Oct. 24 to ask the court to allow him to submit a motion to dismiss the case on claims Smith’s appointment and funding is unconstitutional. The special counsel and his team have until Oct. 31 to file papers opposing this request.
Thursday’s hearing
The case is resuming months after the Supreme Court found that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts that are part of their “core constitutional powers,” and the presumption of immunity for acts that are official but outside their “exclusive authority.” Private acts enjoy no immunity.
The high court sent the case back to Chutkan for further proceedings. The judge held a hearing with Trump’s attorneys and Smith’s prosecutors earlier Thursday where they argued over the timeline and how the Supreme Court’s ruling should be applied to Trump’s alleged conduct. Smith’s team revised the indictment against Trump last week to comply with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
At the hearing, Chutkan and John Lauro, Trump’s lawyer, sparred over whether some of the conduct contained in the new indictment — namely the former president’s conversations with Vice President Mike Pence after the 2020 election — was covered by presidential immunity.
Lauro has argued that the case should be tossed out even with the slimmed-down accusations since Trump’s discussions with Pence should be considered official acts and therefore not subject to prosecution.
But Chutkan said those conversations may be subject to presumptive immunity, the lesser form of protection that can be rebutted by federal prosecutors. Whether Trump and Pence’s interactions are outside of the former president’s official duties will be for her to decide, the judge said.
She also made clear that the upcoming election would not factor into any decisions about how the case will proceed. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is seeking to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in November to secure a second term in the White House.
“The electoral process … is not relevant here,” Chutkan told Lauro. “This court is not concerned with the electoral schedule.”
Repeated warnings from Trump’s lawyer about the “weighty” and “grave” issues before the court earned him condemnation from Chutkan.
“It strikes me that what you’re trying to do is affect the presentation of evidence in this case so as not to impinge on an election,” she said. “I am not considering it.”
The hearing, and Chutkan’s order, reaffirmed that a trial in the case will not take place before the November election. Chutkan said any decisions she makes when applying the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling will be appealed, leading to another pause in the proceedings.
Discussing an eventual trial date would be an “exercise in futility,” she said.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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