Background: the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)/ Left inset: Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)/ Right inset: Former President Donald Trump addresses an audience during a campaign event (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
After a hearing in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case on Wednesday, special counsel Jack Smith and his team noticed that Donald Trump renewed his “presidential immunity” claims and that the former president motioned for a stay of “all proceedings” in his Jan. 6 federal case until those issues are “fully resolved.” When alerting U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to the Washington, D.C., motion the next morning, however, the Special Counsel’s Office unwittingly invited the Mar-a-Lago judge to be “manipulated” by the delay tactics.
Last week, Trump and his lawyers doubled down on their “presidential immunity” arguments by asserting that the charged conduct for trying to overturn the 2020 election fell “within the outer perimeter” of his presidential “official duties,” therefore rendering him immune from prosecution.
In a brief motion to stay the Jan. 6 case on Wednesday, Trump’s team requested that the case be put on hold “until the issues raised in his Motion to Dismiss the Indictment Based on Presidential Immunity […] are fully resolved” — and prior to discovery.
“Here, President Trump has moved to dismiss based on his absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts within the outer perimeter of his Presidential responsibilities,” the motion said. “The prosecution has submitted its response […] and President Trump has replied.”
Calling the issue “fully briefed and ripe for determination,” Trump’s lawyers sought a stay “including all applicable deadlines, pending resolution of the Immunity Motion.”
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Jack Smith and his team reacted on early Thursday morning by including a copy of Trump’s motion to stay in the special counsel’s notice to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida about the former president’s latest attempt to grind proceedings to a halt.
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The notice, submitted by Jack Smith and signed by prosecutor Jay Bratt, said Trump’s lawyers did not mention at a Wednesday hearing before Judge Cannon that they were planning to file the motion, even as the Trump team argued that the Mar-a-Lago trial should be adjourned on the partial basis that the current schedule means Trump and his lawyers have to be “in two places at once.”
“Defendant Trump’s counsel reiterated that argument during the hearing yesterday. However, defendant Trump’s counsel failed to disclose at the hearing that they were planning to file – and yesterday evening did file – the attached motion to stay the proceedings in the District of Columbia until their motion to dismiss the indictment based on presidential immunity is ‘fully resolved,”” the special counsel’s notice said.
The notice said that Trump’s motion for a stay shows that the trial date in D.C. “should not be a determinative factor in the Court’s decision whether to modify the dates” in the Mar-a-Lago case.
But even as the notice said that Trump’s “actions in the hours following the hearing in this case illustrate the point and confirm his overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost,” the special counsel closed with unwitting support for the delay tactics, writing:
This Court should allow itself to be manipulated in this fashion.
Read the notice and attached Trump motion for a stay here.
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