Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that President Trump must disclose whether he will mount an advice of counsel defense means that months before the trial, on a crucial point of strategy, the government will be able to ready its rebuttal.

The special counsel’s office had requested that Mr. Trump tell the court if he intended to argue that he relied on his lawyers in regards to actions he took to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The goal of this defense would be to assert that the former president had a reasonable basis for thinking his actions were legal.

Pinning blame on one’s attorneys can be an attractive approach for defendants arguing that they lacked the intent to commit a crime. The Supreme Court has held that one who relies on counsel cannot “be convicted of a crime which involves wilful and unlawful intent” because it is evidence of good faith efforts to comply with the law. So far, so good for Mr. Trump. 

There are, though, significant downsides for heaping blame on the attorneys. If Mr. Trump does so, he will no longer be able to rely on the privilege that usually protects communications between a client and his counsel. That could put in front of Mr. Smith’s eyes reams of documents, passed between lawyers, having to do with the events of January 6, 2021, and the outcome of the last presidential election.

Judge Chutkan admits that forcing Mr. Trump to indicate whether he will mount this defense is not mandated by law. As she writes, the relevant codes “do not expressly require advance notice of the advice-of-counsel defense.” She notes, though, the position that judges like herself have the “inherent authority to order defendants to provide advance notice” of the defense.

This assertion of judicial prerogative, though, is hardly universal. Judges in Tennessee and Nevada have found that they lack the authority to order a defendant to show strategy in advance of a trial, even if such hanging back causes, as Judge Chutkan puts it, “disruption and delay.” She has, thus far, persistently rebuffed the former president’s requests to push back his trial date of March 4.

Mr. Trump’s position was that he was willing to notify the court of his intent to rely on an advice of counsel defense but that he was not willing to immediately disclose the attorney-client communications that such an announcement entails. Instead, he wanted further hearings to determine the extent of what he is required to turn over to Mr. Smith. 

Judge Chutkan’s decision means that there will be no such hearings because, as she writes, there is “no precedent for that procedure, and it runs contrary to the standard practice” governing such notifications. She adds that “notice without disclosure would have little practical value, and would inject undue delay into the parties’ pre trial preparations.” 

Mr. Trump now has a deadline of January 15 to decide whether he will seek to shift blame to his lawyers. Factoring into that decision will likely be that several of these lawyers are themselves defendants in the criminal case out of Georgia — including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani — and others, like Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, have already pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis.

That deadline of January 15 comes just three weeks before jury selection commences on February 9, signaling Judge Chutkan’s commitment to sticking by her trial date. On Wednesday, the District of Columbia Circuit will hear arguments over whether the gag order imposed on Mr. Trump by Judge Chutkan will stand.