Judge Declines to Hold Prosecutors in Contempt in Trump Election Case

It was one of the odder tit-for-tat battles to have emerged so far in the federal case accusing former President Donald J. Trump of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.

Even though the proceeding was put on hold by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan while Mr. Trump seeks to have the charges tossed out with broad claims of immunity, prosecutors, trying to nudge it forward, have continued filing motions and turning over evidence. The former president’s lawyers have angrily accused them of violating the judge’s order and were eventually annoyed enough to ask that the prosecutors be held in contempt.

After simmering for a month, the dispute was resolved on Thursday when Judge Chutkan, who is handling the case in Federal District Court in Washington, issued an order saying she would not punish anyone with a finding of contempt.

Still, in what felt like an attempt to soothe the tensions between the defense and prosecution, the judge told both sides that they should not file any more “substantive” motions without first asking for permission.

From the outset, the quarrel over the filings and disclosures seemed to be the sort of petulant but ultimately harmless one-upmanship that often arises in prominent criminal cases. But it was also a reflection of a much more consequential fight over the timing of the case and whether it will go to trial as scheduled in March.

It all began last month when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, sent Mr. Trump’s legal team a draft list of exhibits and a modest batch of discovery material even though Judge Chutkan had ordered all deadlines in the case put on hold only days before.

Hours later, Mr. Trump’s lawyers responded with accusations that the prosecutors had “unlawfully attempted to advance this case.” They pointed out that the proceeding had been frozen until Mr. Trump had completed his attempts to challenge the indictment on immunity grounds, and asserted that the government was improperly seeking to rush the case to trial.

Undeterred, Mr. Smith’s team filed a motion two weeks later that sought to preclude Mr. Trump from making what they called “baseless political claims” at the election interference trial. This time, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said they wanted Judge Chutkan to hold Mr. Smith and two of his top deputies in contempt.

The judge declined to do so in her order on Thursday, noting that the government had neither violated the “clear and unambiguous terms” of her previous order pausing the case, nor “acted in bad faith.”

In fact, Judge Chutkan pointed out, just because she had stayed all of the deadlines in the case did not mean she had explicitly forbidden the parties to meet them. If Mr. Smith and his subordinates wanted to comply with them voluntarily, they could, she wrote, adding that lawyers for Mr. Trump did not have to respond.

Judge Chutkan did add a caveat, however, given that the purpose of the stay was to relieve Mr. Trump “from the burdens of preparing for trial and other pretrial litigation.”

She told both sides that they had to ask for her permission before they filed any further “substantive pretrial motions.”