U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan released a series of rules on Friday that former President Donald Trump must follow as he begins to review special counsel Jack Smith‘s evidence ahead of his criminal trial on allegations to subvert the 2020 election results.
Chutkan gave a small victory to Trump’s lawyers during the hearing and ruled that the protective order will only cover material the Justice Department deems as sensitive, which prosecutors said Friday amounted to as much as a quarter of the total discovery evidence.
The judge handed favor to the DOJ in a request to designate witness interviews and recordings as “sensitive.”
“Disclosure of any of those materials creates too great a risk that witnesses may be intimidated” or the jury pool be polluted, Chutkan said.