Shan Wu is a former federal prosecutor who served as counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno

Contrary to the wishful thinking of former President Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump for election interference is not completely dead. In fact, the case is now finally back in the hands of a judge who actually knows how to try a criminal case.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, a former public defender, will decide whether the next stage of the case will be an evidentiary hearing that could amount to a mini-trial of the case against the former President. That mini-trial could and should occur before the election.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s slow roll of its immunity decision, the case was sent back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals which immediately issued its mandate sending the case back to the trial judge, Judge Chutkan, the very same day. The high court had the opportunity to decide the issue in December, but instead its decision did not issue until this summer.

Not only did the timing of the Court’s decision make it impossible to try defendant Trump before the election, but the conservative majority shielded Trump and future presidents in near absolute immunity and made the evidentiary process for bringing cases against a President into a legal labyrinth.

The conservative justices—none of whom appear to have ever tried a criminal case—did what Justice Neil Gorsuch promised to do at oral argument which was to “write for the ages.”

Their majority opinion constructed a process by........

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