Trump’s lawyers late Thursday night — having missed the 5 p.m. deadline set by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — used a basic procedural step to revive many arguments Chutkan had already rejected, a bid to get the immunity case dismissed or delayed.
In a filing nominally about telling the judge why Trump’s side is entitled to more discovery from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office, the lawyers went on a stemwinder about the illegitimacy of the prosecution.
“This case should be dismissed. Promptly,” the lawyers opened.
They rehashed arguments they’d made to a skeptical, often peeved, Chutkan earlier this month in her Washington D.C. courtroom, that the Special Counsel’s inclusion of evidence related to Trump’s pressuring of former Vice President Mike Pence taints the entire indictment. While the Supreme Court only said that the Pence evidence gets presumptive immunity — putting the onus on the government to overcome it — Trump’s team has reframed that finding in absolute terms, arguing that it voids the whole prosecution.
“I’m not sure that I agree with you, as a matter of law, that I can dismiss the superseding indictment based on the Supreme Court decision at all,” Chutkan told Trump lawyer John Lauro then.
Still, the Trump team plugged away with the old arguments, bringing up another point that Chutkan has rejected many times: that the proceedings — which the Special Counsel’s office has said includes new evidence its lawyers plan to detail in a filing next week — threaten the integrity of the election.
“…the Office’s planned filing in defense of the defective Superseding Indictment, before President Trump has had an opportunity to obtain and review all required discovery, will add to ‘the peculiar public opprobrium that attaches to [these] criminal proceedings’ as the election rapidly approaches,” the lawyers wrote, asking for tranches of documents and records from multiple agencies even tangentially connected to the case.
Chutkan had become exasperated with this argument in early September, saying that she’s not focused on the presidency or the election but the “four-count indictment.”
After this newest filing, Trump’s team may be in store for further scolding.
Unless Chutkan accedes to Trump’s demands for delay, Smith’s office is scheduled to submit its opening brief defending the legitimacy of the superseding indictment — complete with the promised new evidence — on Thursday.
Read the filing here:
If the Supreme Court is amiss, you must dismiss!
If he’s so innocent, why is he delaying all these cases so much and saying he has immunity? Isn’t asking for immunity an admission of guilt?
I know, I know, putting any logic behind anything he does is an exercise in futility.
The lesson of this era is if you have enough money you can outrun the law.
The bottom line here is that only the voters can save us from Trump. If he loses on November 5, he goes to jail and our national nightmare is over. If he wins, well… I think we all know what that will mean.
Too bad donnie doesn’t pay lawyers outta his own pocket