With his lawyer claiming he “will scrupulously abide by his conditions of release,” Donald Trump faced DC District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan for the first time Friday, hearing directly from her that his status as a candidate for public office does not impact her decisions in the case, CNN reports.
“This is a criminal case,” Chutkan said during the Friday hearing in Washington. “The need for this criminal case to proceed in normal order and to protect the integrity of the process means there are going to be limits on the defendant’s speech.” Trump will not be allowed to undertake such actions that would intimidate or slander witnesses who have given testimony to Smith’s office regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn the certified results of the 2020 election.
Chutkan warned Trump that she “will be scrutinizing [Trump’s posting on social media and his public statements] very carefully” for signals he is attempting to intimidate witnesses or obstruct the trial. She largely leaned toward the wishes of prosecutors in the case to shield witnesses from threats and protecting sensitive information, although she did not impose a blanket protective order as the Special Counsel’s office wanted. “Even arguably ambiguous statements by the parties or their counsel, if they could be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the process.”
“The fact that he is running a political campaign currently has to yield to the administration of justice. And if that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say in a political speech, that is just how it’s going to have to be.” Chutkan said of Trump, noting that such orders are not unusual for criminal defendants.
Chutkan was succinct in differentiating between Trump’s behavior during courtroom proceedings and his political campaign to Trump’s attorney John Lauro. “You are conflating what your client needs to do to defend himself and what he wants to do politically,” she told him. “And what your client does to defend himself has to happen in this courtroom, not on the internet.”
In other revelations, prosecutors noted that they recorded each of the interviews they conducted, and they will turn over hundreds of hours of taped interviews as well as tens of thousands of pages of transcriptions.