WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s legal team on Friday proposed a court timetable in his federal election meddling case that would delay the legal battle over whether his charges fall under immunity after the election — and delay the start of a possible trial well after that. next opening party.
Special Counsel Jack Smith argued for a vastly different approach to the trial’s timeline, saying the court should immediately begin considering arguments about whether Trump’s actions fall under presidential immunity, a process his office said would include the disclosure of new evidence.
“The government stands ready to waive its immunity opening motion promptly at any time the court deems appropriate,” Senior Assistant Special Counsel Molly Gaston writes for the government.
But Trump’s legal team wants to hammer out other points before addressing the question of whether the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year renders some of the charges against him moot.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has set a hearing for Thursday to discuss the future schedule of the case, which was originally scheduled to go to trial in March 2024.
While Trump’s attorneys never specifically cited the pending election, the schedule outlined in the new filing does not allow for new substantive arguments from the special counsel until the vote is taken. Trump is accused of trying to deceive the American public and disenfranchise voters in several states in allegations related to his multifaceted attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election by falsely claiming it was stolen, culminating in an attack on the US Capitol on January 6. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. He has continued to falsely claim that the election was stolen and has begun to insinuate that there may also be fraud in future elections that would deny him the presidency.
If Trump wins the November election, he would likely be able to drop the case against him before a trial could be held when his appointees take over the Justice Department in January.
Trump’s lawyers said they were “considering multiple challenges” to the superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury earlier this week, arguing that their challenges “should be resolved in his favor as a matter of law and would obviate the need for further proceedings.” One of their challenges is questioning the legality of Smith’s appointment, repeating an argument that helped them successfully win separate charges in federal court in Florida — but a point his lawyers previously chose not to raise in the election interference case.
Attorney General Merrick Garland told NBC News last month that he disagreed with a July ruling by Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida that Smith’s nomination was illegal.
“Do I look like someone who would make that basic mistake in the law?” asked Garland, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Barack Obama at the end of Obama’s second term. “I don’t think so.”
Trump’s team also said it strongly supports that the Supreme Court’s decision means the new indictment should be dismissed entirely because some of the activities described in it, “including, but not limited to, Tweets and public statements about the 2020 federal presidential election, communications with state officials about the federal election, and of appellants’ claims regarding alternative tables,” should be protected from prosecution. Trump’s lawyers said they may also file a motion to dismiss the indictment because former Vice President Mike Pence was named in the grand jury.
Trump’s team proposed a trial schedule that would have the first hearing on their motions the week of Jan. 27, which would be a week after the next president is sworn in. The spring and fall of 2025 would be the time for “additional proceedings, if necessary,” Trump’s lawyers suggested.
The positions of both the government and Trump’s defense team are presented in a joint motion filed late Friday night.
Trump was first indicted on the charges in August 2023 and was originally scheduled to go to trial in March 2024, meaning the case would likely have been sentenced before Election Day and if Trump had been convicted, he would already be convicted or have a sentencing date in the books. But the strategy chosen by his legal team paid off, and their appeal significantly delayed the case.
The special counsel’s case was weakened by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, which gave the former president broad immunity to prevent him from being prosecuted for his duties as president. In an attempt to simplify the issues raised by the Supreme Court’s ruling, the new indictment — returned by a federal grand jury earlier this week — contains no allegations of Trump’s efforts to weaponize the Justice Department by appointing Jeffrey Clark. an environmental lawyer with no criminal prosecution experience who believed the election might have been stolen via a smart thermostat — as acting U.S. attorney general just hours before the Jan. 6 attack.
While many of the Jan. 6 defendants have admitted they were duped by Trump’s 2020 election lies and told jurors they regret being gullible enough to fall for them in the first place, Trump’s team has tried to give his mental gloss. election conspiracy theories. In court, they have argued that those election conspiracy theories — advanced by the same man who rose to political prominence by falsely claiming that America’s first black president had a fake birth certificate and was actually born in Kenya — “are credible and are held in good faith.”
Jack Smith’s team has specifically said that they believe Trump didn’t actually believe the lies he was spreading about the election, and that in fact he knew they were false.
“These allegations were unsupported, objectively unreasonable and constantly changing, and were repeated by the defendant and his co-conspirators even after they were publicly denied,” the new indictment said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
