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In further evidence that 2024 is going to be just as ridiculous as 2023, Donald Trump’s lawyers are screaming bloody murder today, accusing prosecutors in the election interference case of a conspiracy to produce discovery and aggravated docketing of motions.
This latest public tantrum comes in the form of motion for order to show cause demanding that Judge Tanya Chutkan hold Special Counsel Jack Smith and Senior Assistant Special Counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas P. Windom in contempt for continuing to file motions and produce discovery while the case is stayed for his doomed immunity appeal.
The prosecutors have consistently maintained that they intend to adhere to all deadlines set out in the August scheduling order, irrespective of the stay. On December 18, they docketed a notice of service apprising the court that they were delivering a draft exhibit list to the defense “to help ensure that trial proceeds promptly if and when the mandate returns.” Obviously this imposed no obligation on Trump’s attorney John Lauro to do anything at all. But hours later he dropped a bigly pissy response accusing the government of “illegal” discovery production and trying the former president “in absentia.”
Apparently the special counsel was not convinced by Donald Trump’s legal stylings, since it followed up with a motion in limine on December 27, in accordance with the stayed pretrial order, requesting that the court bar Trump from turning his trial into a three-ring circus by blaming January 6 on Antifa, FBI provocateurs, Chinese bluetooth thermostats, Italian space lasers, or prosecutorial misconduct. And that is what prompted today’s fit of apoplexy and demand that the court sanction the prosecutors and make them pay Lauro and his co-counsel Todd Blanche for the time they spent dealing with those filings they are wholly free to ignore.
Judge Chutkan has not yet weighed in on this dispute. Nonetheless, Lauro insists that the special counsel had adequate notice that his filings were noxious to the court after “President Trump patiently explained this to the prosecutors,” and the “repeated, intentional, and malicious actions demonstrate that the prosecutors have not once attempted to comply with the Stay Order, but have instead openly defied it from day one.”
By this logic, all motions, including the instant motion to show cause, violate the stay order. But Lauro and Blanche aren’t too bothered about logical consistency. In the same breath where they complain about “partisan rhetoric,” they accuse the special counsel of a “desperate effort to harass President Trump and prevent his likely victory in the 2024 Presidential Election” and using this case “as a platform to advance the Biden Campaign’s dishonest political talking points, including, for example, echoing the false and defamatory claims that President Trump spreads ‘disinformation.’”
To the extent that the former president is making any real argument, his claim rests on the assumption that a motion in limine is a “proceeding,” and so is uploading discovery — a proposition for which they cite exactly zero evidence. His counsel also takes some … liberties with Judge Chutkan’s order staying “the deadlines and proceedings scheduled by its Pretrial Order.”
“Despite the Court’s explicit holding that ‘additional discovery’ and ‘briefing’ would violate the Stay Order, the prosecutors repeatedly engaged in that exact conduct, disobeying the Stay Order at least three times in just two weeks,” they fulminate. In fact, the order says that “requiring additional discovery or briefing,” would “impose burdens of litigation.” Judge Chutkan never said that the government’s voluntary production or motions would burden the defendant — something Trump’s lawyers clearly know, since they very carefully picked out which words to (mis)quote.
“This conduct is beyond the pale and must be sanctioned,” they howl, urging the imposition of generous attorneys fees to deter further “malicious conduct.”
“Although the prosecutors may scarcely feel the impact of paying President Trump’s reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses given the Biden Administration’s blank check, at the very least it will signal that their continued violations will not come without cost,” said the lawyers paid by Trump’s Save America PAC.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign is taking advantage of this opportunity to bark like trained seals in praise of the Dear Leader’s “powerhouse motion to hold Crooked Joe Biden’s henchman, Deranged Jack Smith, in contempt of Court.” Donate now to make America great again! Or at least to keep paying Lauro and Blanche to file these amazing bullshit motions.
US v. Trump [District Docket via Court Listener]
US v. Trump [Circuit Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes the Law and Chaos substack and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
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