In Trump cases, experts say defendant’s rhetoric will be hard to police

At her first hearing overseeing the 2020 election obstruction case against former president Donald Trump, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan tried to draw a line in the sand: “I intend to keep politics out of this.”

Legal experts say that will be a tricky — perhaps impossible — task, especially in a criminal prosecution in which politicians or their aides are the alleged perpetrators, witnesses and victims, and the defendant is running for president.

On Monday, a state court judge in Atlanta issued strict limits on Trump’s public statements as conditions of his...