WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s lawyers plan to ask a judge to dismiss a federal election tampering suit against the former president after a Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the scope of a major indictment, according to a court filing.
In a joint filing late Friday with prosecutors dueling proposals for the next steps, the defense team predicted a series of expected challenges stretching deep into next year in a criminal case accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of a criminal trial. 2020 presidential election.
These include claims that the new, narrower indictment filed by prosecutors last week still contains allegations that Trump, as a former president, is entitled to immunity from, such as his conversations with then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Defense lawyers also plan to “threshold” the case to dismiss on the same grounds that a federal judge in Florida cited last month in throwing out a separate prosecutor who accused Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. property. The judge in that case, Aileen Cannon, ruled that special counsel Jack Smith, whose team brought the case, had been appointed illegally and that his office had been improperly funded.
A federal court filing in Washington offers competing visions of how the case should proceed, and is set for a status conference next week – the first hearing in the case in months.
The Supreme Court’s ruling ensured that the trial cannot be held before the election, and it is now up to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan to decide which of the charges can be included in the case and which must be excluded. .
The timeline proposed by the Trump team sees the case continuing in pretrial investigation possibly until the fall of 2025 or well after this November’s presidential election. Smith’s team did not suggest specific dates, but said it was prepared to file an opening legal brief on the central issue of Trump’s immunity “promptly at any time the court deems appropriate.”
The filing is an acknowledgment of the radically changed legal landscape since Smith’s indictment in June 2023 and the challenges prosecutors have faced in trying to hold Trump accountable this year.
While prosecutors initially accused Trump of wide-ranging schemes to cling to power and prevent a peaceful transfer of power, they must now contend with the fallout from a Supreme Court ruling that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity from exercising their core constitutional powers and are presumed to. immune from other official actions they take as president.
Smith’s team responded to the ruling last week with a new indictment that removed allegations about Trump’s ties to the Justice Department, an area of activity the court said Trump was immune from prosecution, and made other changes.
But Trump’s lawyers, according to Friday’s filing, don’t believe prosecutors went far enough, saying they “strongly believe that many of the classes of conduct alleged in the impeachment charge are immune — including, but not limited to, Tweets and public statements from the federal government. The 2020 presidential election, communications from state to authorities about federal elections and claims related to alternative voter lists.
They said they particularly objected to the continued inclusion of allegations that Trump had beaten Pence to get him to refuse to certify the vote count of the appellants. The Supreme Court said Trump is “at least presumptively immune” from prosecution for that conduct, Trump’s lawyers note.
“If the court decides, as it should, that the Special Counsel cannot rebut the presumption that these acts are untouchable, binding law requires that the entire indictment be dismissed because the grand jury found the evidence immunized,” Trump’s lawyers wrote Friday.
