
In his federal election interference case, the legal team of former President Donald Trump on Friday proposed a court schedule that would push back the start of a potential trial until well after the next inauguration and postpone a legal battle over whether or not the president’s charges are immune until after the election.
The trial’s schedule should be approached very differently, according to special counsel Jack Smith, who suggested that the court should hear arguments right away regarding whether or not Trump’s activities are protected by presidential immunity. His office claimed that this process would involve the presentation of fresh material.
The government’s senior assistant special counsel, Molly Gaston, writes, “When the Court determines it is appropriate, the Government will swiftly file its opening immunity brief.”
However, before delving into the issue of whether the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year renders any of the accusations made against Trump irrelevant, Trump’s legal team wants to work through other issues.
The lawsuit, which was initially scheduled to go to trial in March 2024, has been rescheduled for a hearing before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday.
Although the election was never specifically mentioned by Trump’s attorneys, the new filing’s timeline forbids any additional substantial arguments from the special counsel until after the election is over. Regarding his multifaceted attempt to trump up the results of the 2020 election by claiming it was stolen, which culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, Trump is accused of attempting to deceive the American public and deny voters the right to vote in a number of states. In his not-guilty plea, Trump has refuted any misconduct. He’s started to erroneously assert that the election was rigged and has persisted in his deceptive claims that it was, all in an attempt to prevent him from winning the presidency.
Once his appointees take over the Justice Department in January, Trump would probably be able to stop the case against him before a trial could begin if he won the election in November.
After a federal grand jury handed a superseding indictment earlier this week, Trump’s attorneys stated they were “considering several challenges” to the indictment, claiming their arguments “should be decided in his favor on a legal subject, saving the need for additional actions.” One of their obstacles will be challenging the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment, reiterating a defense that they used to successfully get unrelated charges dismissed from a federal court in Florida. However, Smith’s attorneys chose not to raise this defense in the election meddling case.
NBC News was informed last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland that he did not agree with the July ruling that Smith’s appointment was illegal by Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida.
“Do I seem like someone who would make that fundamental legal error?” questioned Garland, the former president Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court in the latter part of his second term. “I don’t believe so.”
Trump’s team also stated that they steadfastly maintained that the new indictment should be dismissed entirely in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, as some of the actions listed in it should be exempt from prosecution. These actions include “tweets and public declarations regarding the 2020 presidential race, conversations with state representatives over the federal election, and claims of alternative elector slates.” Given that former Vice President Mike Pence was brought up in front of the grand jury, Trump’s attorneys stated they might possibly submit a motion to have the indictment dropped.
According to the trial timetable that Trump’s team requested, the first hearing on their motions would take place the week of January 27, one week following the inauguration of the next president. Trump’s attorneys suggested scheduling “Additional proceedings, if necessary,” for the spring and fall of 2025.
In a joint motion submitted late Friday night, the arguments of the government and Trump’s defense team are outlined.
Since Trump was first charged in August 2023 and his trial was initially set for March 2024, it seems likely that a decision in the case would have been made before Election Day and, in the event of a conviction, Trump would have received a sentence or had a sentencing date set in stone. However, his legal team’s approach paid off, as their appeal greatly prolonged the case.
The special counsel’s case was undermined by the Supreme Court’s decision to grant the former president broad immunity, shielding him from prosecution for official acts he performed while in office. The new indictment, returned by a separate federal grand jury earlier this week, attempts to downplay the issues raised by the Supreme Court’s ruling by omitting all of the accusations regarding Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department by appointing Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer with no background in criminal prosecution who thought the election might have been rigged using a smart thermostat, as acting attorney general of the United States just hours before the attack on January 6.
Trump’s team has tried to give his election conspiracy theories an intellectual spit-shine, even though many of the Jan. 6 defendants have since admitted that they were duped by his false statements during the 2020 election and told courts they regret being credulous enough to believe them in the first place. The same individual who gained notoriety by asserting that the first Black president of the United States was born in Kenya and had a forged birth certificate has argued in court that the electoral conspiracy ideas “were plausible and maintained in good faith.”
Jack Smith’s team has stated unequivocally that they think Trump understood the lies he was spreading about the election were untrue and didn’t genuinely believe them.
The revised indictment said, “Even when these allegations were clearly refuted in public, the defendant and his accomplices kept making them. These assertions were inconsistent, unsubstantiated, and objectively irrational.”