Trump's latest filing is 'one of the most chilling things I've ever seen': law professor
NYU Law professor Kenji Yoshino was shocked by the latest filing former President Donald Trump's lawyers put forward in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — and explained to CNN's Kaitlan Collins on Thursday why he found it so "chilling."
This comes as special counsel Jack Smith proposed a July 8 trial date for that case, and Trump's team is countering with August 12.
"In his filing, what you could see is that Trump was leaning heavily on being the Republican nominee, which he's not yet, but it seems like he's on the path to do. You know they talked about the dates of the Republican National Convention. They talked about other campaign dates," said Collins. "How does the judge look at that? Does she take that into in consideration for criminal proceedings?"
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"I think in an ideal world, she should not," said Yoshino. "I mean, no one is above the law. This is a criminal proceeding. She should just set the dates as it were. But I can't imagine that ,as a human being, she will be able to ignore that.
"One of the most chilling things that I've seen in 25 years of teaching constitutional law is the trial schedule that defense attorneys proposed," Yoshino added. "And I'm sure you've seen it as well."
"That's one of the most chilling things you've ever seen?" Collins pressed him.
"Well, just this idea that you have somebody who's saying, here's a pretrial motion, and then here's the Republican National Convention, because it just suggests that this is a very first time in our nation's history that we have an individual who is a frontrunner running for president, who was a former president who's under criminal indictment," Yoshino replied. "This has never happened before, this is completely uncharted territory ... it did more than anything else to knock my socks off."
Trump has sought to delay his trials until after the November presidential election. If re-elected, he may be able to have the Department of Justice drop the charges.
In Washington, Trump is trying to delay another of his cases by claiming he is protected by presidential immunity. The Supreme Court will review his claims in April, which will also delay that case.
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