Judge sets Trump 2020 election case pretrial date

A US judge has scheduled a pretrial meeting in the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

A court document showed on Saturday that District Judge Tanya Chutkan has scheduled a pretrial meeting on August 16.

Chutkan’s order comes a day after she regained jurisdiction in the case which had been on pause for nearly eight months to allow Trump to get his presidential immunity claim adjudicated.

She is expected to decide in the coming weeks which aspects of the indictment obtained by Special Counsel Jack Smith must be tossed out after the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity for official actions taken while in office.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts accusing him of a multi-part conspiracy to subvert his 2020 election loss.

In the court document Chutkan said Trump will not be required to appear in court for the status conference on August 16. All parties were asked to propose a schedule for pretrial proceedings by Friday.

Trump’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment.

Chutkan also denied two of Trump’s motions to dismiss the charges against him, one on the basis of statutory grounds and one on the basis of vindictive and selective prosecution.

Trump may file a renewed motion after all issues of immunity have been resolved, she said.

The Supreme Court’s decision to take up the immunity claim case, which was heard on its last day of arguments in April and ruled on July 1, made it all but impossible for the criminal case to go to trial before the November 5 US presidential election.

Chutkan has previously promised to give Trump about 90 days to prepare for trial once the case returns to her courtroom, with a trial expected to last six to eight weeks.

Trump, the first former US president to be criminally prosecuted, is the Republican nominee for president.

US Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday secured the delegate votes needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.