Left to right: Special Counsel Jack Smith speaks to the press on Aug. 1, 2023 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File). Aileen M. Cannon speaks remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (U.S. Senate), Donald Trump speaks with supporters at the Westside Conservative Breakfast, June 1, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File).
The only hope that special counsel Jack Smith has of potentially unwinding the dismissal of Donald Trump‘s classified documents indictment in Florida and seeing oral arguments get off the ground at the appellate level before the presidential election in roughly 100 days lies in a gambit to fast-track the matter.
Such a request is a long shot bid — though one that Smith could reasonably be expected to make to either the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court.
Historically, the special counsel has struck out when it comes to expediting matters on Trump’s criminal dockets. The Supreme Court rejected his petition in December to fast-track arguments on whether Trump had “absolute” immunity from criminal prosecution in his Jan. 6 indictment. The high court offered no explanation for its decision and then waited until the very end of its most recent term to render one — and on July 1, the justices granted Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.
The Florida case was dismissed not long afterward, with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon leaning heavily on Justice Clarence Thomas’ lone concurrence in the immunity decision that questioned the validity of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.
Now all Smith has in Florida is a long to-do list and a schedule from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The schedule issued by the appellate court this week effectively forecloses on the hope of reviving the classified documents case before voters across the U.S. head to the polls. Smith’s first deadline to file his opening brief is Aug. 27 — but even if he filed before then, Trump is still allotted a full 30 days to respond. Then, of course, Smith has a chance to reply to that too. That means oral arguments almost certainly wouldn’t be set for weeks until after that point.
All things being possible, Trump could be elected president long before then.
The Justice Department will not comment on what Smith intends to do with the case, let alone whether he will attempt to fast-track it. But if the past is any indicator of the future, Smith may try once more — and perhaps with even greater flourish and urgency this time — to persuade the courts that they must reject Cannon’s ahistoric ruling and try Trump with the expediency and urgency the criminal case deserves because the stakes of the public interest have never been so high and now only grow higher with each passing day.
Last year, when Smith urged the Supreme Court to expedite matters, he reiterated the priority that “the public interest in a former President’s criminal prosecution outweighs the theoretical asserted burdens such a prosecuting entails.”
Former presidents should not be subjected to vexatious post-presidency litigation or harassment, he conceded, but that outcome is has always been unlikely thanks to existing “robust procedural safeguards attended to federal criminal prosecutions.”
“By contrast,” he wrote, “”the public interest in fair and accurate judicial proceedings is at its height in the criminal setting.”
Yet the window Smith may have to prosecute Trump for allegedly hoarding state secrets and other classified records in that very setting is closing.
It will be up to Smith and his team of federal prosecutors to come up with an appeal that not only works to convince the court to reassert his authority as special counsel, but also convinces the Eleventh Circuit to further declare, as district courts and the Supreme Court have long observed, that prosecutions of accused criminals, no matter how powerful they may be, is “essential to fulfilling our constitutional promise of equal justice under the law.”
Law&Crime takes a look at this and other key developments in Trump’s cases in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.
NEW YORK
CRIMINAL
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unloaded a 69-page response to Trump’s demand that his 34-felony count hush-money conviction be overturned on the basis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial immunity ruling. That ruling has “no bearing on this prosecution,” Bragg wrote Thursday, adding that “for one thing, defendant failed to preserve an objection on immunity grounds to most of the evidence that is subject of his current motion.”
Trump, if he will be sentenced, is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 18 and a recent lawsuit to head that off entirely from the Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, is what New York prosecutors are calling a “dangerous” maneuver.
CIVIL
The push to unwind his fate in the Empire State is in full swing: Trump slammed New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron in his appellate brief seeking to overturn his $454 million civil fraud judgment by declaring that the judge and prosecutor don’t understand “basic banking concepts like a money market account.”
Meanwhile, Engoron has rejected a request from Trump’s lawyers to recuse himself from the case.
The court-appointed monitor tasked to oversee the Trump Organization as a result of the civil fraud judgment reported that things are starting to look up for the entity in terms of compliance with financial reporting obligations. Several recommendations were also made by the monitor, Barbara Jones, a retired judge who served as a special master in Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani’s attorney-client privilege reviews.
A judge has ruled that Trump’s defamation lawsuit against ABC claiming correspondent George Stephanopoulos wrongfully stated multiple times that Trump was found liable for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll can advance.
Left: New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks to the media, Nov. 6, 2023, in New York (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File). Center: Justice Engoron (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File). Right: Former President Donald Trump speaks during a break in closing arguments at New York Supreme Court, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Seth Wenig).
FLORIDA
CRIMINAL
A little more than a week after special counsel Jack Smith filed his notice to appeal the decision by Cannon to dismiss the classified documents indictment, the Eleventh Circuit has set a deadline for Smith to file his full appellate brief of Aug. 27. Trump will need to reply within 30 days and Smith will have up to 21 days to respond to that.
OF NOTE: Trump inched one step closer to achieving discovery and possible deposition from Pulitzer Prize members who reported on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe when a judge in Okeechobee County rejected an effort by the board members to toss Trump’s defamation conspiracy lawsuit against them. Elsewhere in Florida: a resident of the Sunshine State was arrested for threatening Trump and his pick for vice president in the 2024 campaign season, J.D. Vance.
Inset: Michael Wiseman (Palm Beach County Jail). Background: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attend the Republican National Convention, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File).
GEORGIA
CRIMINAL
Trump and 18 of his co-defendants accused of trying to pass off bogus elector slates in an effort to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory there will continue to cool their heels this summer. The matter has been on hold since June when an appeals court agreed to stay proceedings while a push to get Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis off the case continues. Oral arguments weighing her possible disqualification don’t kick off until October.
The anniversary of this indictment is approaching next month on Aug. 14.
OF NOTE: Fresh off the Republican National Convention, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the currently stalled racketeering case, Rudy Giuliani, got some bad news this week when a judge overseeing his bankruptcy said he may be forced to put Giuliani under oath and potentially liquidate his apartment in Manhattan. At least Giuliani has Mike Lindell in his corner.
Left: Mike Lindell pictured in an ad on The Rudy Giuliani Show (Rudolph W. Giuliani/YouTube). Right: Giuliani interviewed by CNN at the RNC (Ted Goodman).
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SUPREME COURT
Still no word from the high court on whether it will grant a long shot writ of certiorari to a Jan. 6 rioter seeking to unwind one of the most common misdemeanor charges used to prosecute accused rioters.
CRIMINAL
Next week will mark one year since Trump was indicted on four felony counts alleging he criminally conspired to subvert the results of the 2020 election and intimidate voters in the run-up to and on Jan. 6, 2021.
After the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling on July 11, the waiting game continues.
OF NOTE: Judges in the nation’s capital and were allegedly violently threatened by a man from Nevada this week who also targeted judges overseeing Trump’s defamation cases in New York and the judge who oversaw Trump’s criminal hush-money trial in the state. He faces 22 counts.
Left to right: New York Justice Juan Merchan. March 14, 2024 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig), Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Dec. 4, 2023 (Lev Radin/Sipa USA/Sipa via AP), U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, Dec. 2014 (AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano), U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, May 2008 (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File).
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