Trump's Legal Team Gets Scolded Before Judge Rules Against Them

Donald Trump's lawyers had their first hearing in front of Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday, and it could not have gone worse for them. At one point, Chutkan actually had to scold Trump's lawyer John Lauro over his absurd claims about not being ready for trial. But at the end of it all, the judge refused to grant Trump's request of an April 2026 trial, and instead set the trial for March 4th of this coming year. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Well, folks yesterday, Donald Trump's lawyers had their hearing along with the prosecutors, of course, in front of Judge Tanya Chut Ken, where Trump's lawyers went in and told the judge, Hey, listen, judge, we really need until April of 2026 before we're gonna be ready for trial. And Judge Chut, Ken said, listen, I'm not unreasonable. I understand you can't be ready for trial tomorrow. Uh, but there's no reason on God's green Earth why I should give you two years to prep for this thing. And Trump's lawyers came back and said, listen, judge, we want two years because the prosecution had two years to put together their case to make the indictment. So we get just as long as they get. Judge Truken then made the point to tell them, like, listen, okay, first of all, no, like, that's not even a possibility, but let's not pretend like this is back in the olden days where you had to go through documents by hand with a highlighter and a pen.

She goes, you, you've got programs now that can do that and they can actually make very short work of it. And yes, again, having worked in a law firm for nearly, nearly 20 years, she's right. Those things exist. Very efficient, very effective. Um, and so ultimately after a very heated back and forth, by the way, Trump's lawyer, John Loro, uh, was getting very animated according to reports, started yelling at one point. Judge Chuck can kept her cool the whole time. Did not raise her voice. She did kind of have to scold him. At one point though, when he accused special prosecutor Jack Smith of violating his office, which is not a thing that happened, that's not even a thing that's really a thing. Like, that's something that that lawyer just made up. And of course the judge kind of put him in his place for it.

But then when all was said and done and it was time to set the date, the judge said, you know what? March 4th, not March 4th, 2026, not March 4th, 2025, the next March 4th on the calendar is when y'all are gonna be walking into my courtroom and we're gonna get this trial started. Folks. Now of course, republicans are off, right? That's right before Super Tuesday. Uh, Matt Gaetz has already said, I'm gonna censure her for this. Carrie Lake went on Steve Bannon's podcast and said, Americans now want a street fight, a fist fight. She said, so weird reaction from a bunch of angry belligerent Republicans. But nevertheless, judge Truken could not be deterred and said, you will have plenty of time to prep The prosecution wanted it on January 2nd. I'm not gonna do January 2nd. You wanted it in April, 2026. So let's meet not even close to the middle and do it on March 4th. I love it because Chuck Ken also brought up something that was very important during the back and forth with Trump's lawyer, John, Laura. 'cause Laura was like, Hey, listen, they've had two

Years, years to do this. We, we just got this, you know, a couple days ago. And the judge was like, you haven't been like, you haven't been doing anything through this whole time. Like you've known they were working on this and you didn't bother to like start a defense like nothing. You didn't, you just kind of sat around and did nothing. Right? That kind of put Laura back on his heels a little bit. He didn't quite know how to respond to that. 'cause the answer's like, well, uh, I mean, I guess yeah, we didn't do anything, but it is what it is. Donald Trump will end up having this trial delayed. Uh, in fact, the lawyer already promised us that. He is like, look, we got a lot of motions. We're gonna file.