[6] On February 2, 2024, Judge Tanya Chutkan said she would not schedule a trial until the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decided whether Trump was immune from prosecution.

[18] Trump continued expressing these sentiments into the 2020 presidential election; for months, he prepared arguments in the event of his loss, primarily relating to mail-in ballots.

The effort to write these documents and persuade Republican officials to sign them was performed by Trump's lawyers, including Giuliani and John Eastman, who claimed that irregularities in the election had occurred and proposed that an "alternate" slate of electors should be established while they gathered evidence.

Alternatively, Trump allies posited that Pence could consider the election "defective" under the Electoral Count Act and allow the House of Representatives to decide the outcome.

[29] During the two months following the election, Trump made multiple phone calls to Republican officials in states that had narrowly been won by Biden, asking them to reverse the results and give the victory to him.

[30] Both Trump and Giuliani called Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, asking him to look into claims of fraud, but he declined to do so without evidence.

[33] Trump continued to repeat false claims about the election in multiple states leading up to January 6, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona.

[34] On the morning of January 6, Trump gave a speech in the Ellipse, a park near the White House, and encouraged his followers to walk down to Pennsylvania Avenue to incite within Republicans lawmakers the "kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country".

In a CNN interview in January 2022, deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco stated that the Department of Justice would investigate the Trump fake electors plot.

"[57] On January 3, it is alleged that White House deputy counsel Patrick F. Philbin privately said that if Trump held onto power, there would be "riots in every major city in the United States", to which "Co-conspirator No.

[84][85] However, Chutkan paused deadlines in the case after Trump asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on December 7 to decide whether he is immune from prosecution.

[100] On November 25, Smith filed a motion to drop all charges against Trump, citing the DOJ's policy of not prosecuting sitting Presidents,[14][101] and Chutkan approved the request the same day.

[109] A Texas woman was charged the next week with leaving Chutkan a voicemail with racial and gender slurs in which she threatened: "Hey you stupid slave nigger ...

"[110][111][a] At the August 11 hearing, Chutkan issued a less broad protective order than what was sought by prosecutors, who wanted to lock down all evidence turned over in discovery.

She admonished Trump's attorneys that inflammatory public remarks by the former president would cause her to take measures to expedite the trial and prevent potential witness tampering and jury pool tainting.

A prosecutor told the court that once the protective order was in place, the special counsel expected to provide the defense about 11.6 million pages or files of materials by the end of August.

[117] Court documents released on September 15 showed the special counsel previously asked Judge Chutkan in sealed briefs to impose a "narrowly tailored" gag order on Trump, asserting that since his indictment he "has spread disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors and prospective witnesses.

[134] Chutkan granted the prosecution's request on October 29, stating in her ruling that "First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings ... yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice – a principle reflected in Supreme Court precedent", and citing Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada (1991), that "contrary to Defendant's argument, the right to a fair trial is not his alone, but belongs also to the government and the public.

[141] At the November 20 hearing, a three-judge panel (with Brad Garcia, Patricia Millett, and Cornelia Pillard presiding) suggested that it might limit the scope of the gag order.

[142][143][144] On November 23, the prosecution's filing urged reinstatement of the gag order, citing a document that compiled hundreds of voicemails containing threats and harassment of presiding New York State Unified Court System Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York civil investigation of The Trump Organization;[145] the next day, the defense replied, claiming that the evidence the prosecution cited was irrelevant.

He's also free to speak about special counsel Jack Smith, President Joe Biden, and the Justice Department, and he's allowed to say that the charges are "politically motivated".

"[8][190][191] The panel held further that former Presidents have no immunity for "allegedly violat[ing] generally applicable criminal laws" while in office, and specifically "to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power – the recognition and implementation of election results".

It omitted mention of some of Trump's alleged activities, including his attempts to involve the Justice Department in his claims of election fraud,[b] as such "official acts" can no longer be used as evidence following the Supreme Court's decision on immunity.

[214] Following Trump's election in November 2024, Smith filed a motion to dismiss the case without prejudice, citing the DOJ's policy of not prosecuting sitting Presidents.

The judge in that case, Aileen Cannon, stayed the release of the entire report covering both prosecutions until three days after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals would rule on the matter.

[217] Cannon responded by requesting the government to address by the morning of January 12 whether anything in the election obstruction volume of the report has any relationship to the defendants in the ongoing classified documents prosecution.

[219] On October 24, 2023, ABC News and The Guardian reported that anonymous sources have stated that Trump administration White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has received legal immunity from Jack Smith in exchange for testimony under oath and has testified before the grand jury.

Prosecutors asserted that Trump and his co-conspirators knew Biden was taking the lead in Michigan results and sought to subvert them, with the campaign employee encouraging "rioting and other methods of obstruction."

"[225] On December 11, the special counsel filed a brief indicating he would present an expert witness at trial who had extracted and examined data from Trump's phone from the weeks while he attempted to subvert the election.

[231] The Trump campaign responded to the indictment with a press release, accusing President Joe Biden of political persecution and claiming that it was election interference.