The Department of Justice on Thursday in a strongly worded court filing rejected efforts by Donald Trump’s legal team to delay the federal case against the former president over allegations he mishandled classified documents until after the 2024 presidential election.
The DOJ in particular cited Trump’s legal team’s assertion that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) warrants a dismissal of the case, saying it “borders on frivolous.”
Trump’s lawyers in a late Monday court filing sought to delay the trial until after the election, citing two novel legal issues that they assert make the case complex, which the DOJ characterizes as “the authority of the Special Counsel to bring and maintain this action, and the alleged intersection of the Presidential Records Act with the criminal statutes charged in the Indictment.”
The DOJ in Thursday’s court filing contends that, “As for the impact of the Presidential Records Act on this prosecution, any argument that it mandates dismissal of the Indictment or forms a defense to the charges here borders on frivolous.”
“The PRA is not a criminal statute, and in no way purports to address the retention of national security information. The Defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal of the Indictment, and the Government will respond promptly. But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it 'novel,' and then claim that the Court will require an indefinite continuance in order to resolve it. Moreover, even if the Court were to conclude that these legal issues were novel, the Act requires more: the issues must be novel such that 'it is unreasonable to expect adequate preparation for pretrial proceedings or for the trial itself within the time limits established by this section.'
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman gave the DOJ high marks for its rejection of Trump’s assertion.
“Gov strong response re trial date in FLA case, just in,” Weissman tweeted.
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti suggested the argument that Trump’s legal team needs additional time to review hundreds of thousands of documents isn’t without merit, but that special counsel Jack Smith appears to have factored that in.
“Jack Smith’s arguments are good, but most judges would be sympathetic to defense counsel who are reviewing over 400,000 documents amidst work on other cases,” Mariotti tweeted Thursday.
“Most judges would not push this case faster than a typical complex case of its type, which is what Smith is asking for.”
Some of the former president’s top advisors have suggested Trump’s best legal strategy is winning the 2024 election, The New York Times reported earlier this week.
