Jack Smith

Angry Trump spokesperson erupts over Jack Smith's request that SCOTUS rule on immunity

Donald Trump's spokesperson is furious that Special Counsel Jack Smith is trying to "leapfrog" the former president's delay tactics by taking his presidential immunity argument directly to the Supreme Court.

"Crooked Joe Biden's henchman, Deranged Jack Smith is so obsessed with interfering in the 2024 Presidential Election with the goal of preventing President Trump from retaking the Oval Office," reads the statement, flagged by the Guardian and attributed to a Trump spokesperson.

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Expert warns Jan. 6 cases are 'out the window' if Jack Smith gambit backfires

If Trump has an ace up his sleeve and can notch a win in the nation's highest court, multiple cases could be done for.

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, appearing on CNN's "The Lead" with Jake Tapper, spelled out how Trump's chances for victories should the Supreme Court take up special counsel Jack Smith's request and rule in his favor on whether the 45th president is immune from criminal prosecution for the spate of crimes he's alleged to have committed while serving as commander in chief.

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Fani Willis' case is also 'doomed' if Jack Smith's SCOTUS bid fails: legal expert

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ Georgia election interference case will be “doomed” if the Supreme Court rules Donald Trump is immune from criminal prosecution in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case, legal analyst Elie Honig said Monday.

“If Donald Trump is to win here, obviously Jack's Smith federal election interference case is out the window,” Honig said.

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Pro-Trump defense attorney says Jack Smith will win Supreme Court gambit

A criminal defense attorney who opposes Donald Trump's prosecutions said that he expects special counsel Jack Smith to prevail in his plea for the Supreme Court to allow the case to move forward.

Hours after Smith took his case to the Supreme Court, attorney Ken Belkin explained why the special counsel would likely prevail. Trump has appealed the case, claiming he is immune from prosecution for election interference because he was president at the time of the alleged crime.

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'Extraordinary request': SCOTUS urged to hear case in effort to keep Trump trial on track

Special counsel Jack Smith filed motions aimed at keeping Donald Trump's criminal trial on schedule to start in March 2024.

The special counsel's office filed the motions Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court and a Washington, D.C., federal appeals court seeking to fast-track a hearing of Trump's appeal of a ruling against his claim that he has presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, reported The Messenger.

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Threats in Trump fraud trial have dropped since gag order enforced: attorney general

Former President Donald Trump has been facing two separate gag orders — one in New York Attorney General Letitia James' fraud case, the other in special counsel Jack Smith's election interference prosecution.

Trump attorney Alina Habba has been angrily railing against the gag order in James' case, insisting that Trump's First Amendment rights are being violated. But James' office, according to Newsweek, has defended the gag order in a court filing, citing threats against Justice Arthur Engoron's staff as an important reason for it.

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Trump's attempt to 'graymail' Jack Smith into dropping charges will flop: expert

Donald Trump's attempts to use discovery to access sensitive government documents in the Washington D.C. trial for attempts to subvert the 2020 election results is nothing more than a ploy to get Jack Smith to drop charges against the former president, writes former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.

In a posting to her Substack platform, Vance agreed with Smith's office that the ex-president's legal team is engaging in a fishing expedition in its requests for evidence complied by the government-related to outside interference in the election Trump lost by over 7 million votes.

According to Vance, Trump and his people are engaging in what is known as "graymail" in an effort to get the special counsel to back off — and that it will go nowhere with Smith.

"The defendant [Trump] demands an unprecedented expansion of the Government’s discovery obligations that would provide special treatment for him and result in delay," wrote Smith in a recent filing. "He asks this Court to find that a wide array of entities both inside and outside the Executive Branch are part of the Government’s prosecution team."

Vance went on to explain what Trump could be really trying to achieve with this filing.

"There’s a concept called graymail. That’s what happens when a defendant demands that the government handover classified material in discovery, in hopes that rather than expose important national secrets, prosecutors will dismiss some or all of the charges against them," she wrote before adding, "Smith works through all of Trump’s allegations regarding election fraud—everything from allegations of infrastructure compromise to allegations there were government agents at the Capitol on January 6—in a meticulous fashion, demonstrating that there is no evidence to be had because there was no fraud."

Predicting the judge would deny the former president's move, she added, "The bottom line is that his efforts to expand the universe of entities within the prosecution team is baseless and he fails to show that information he seeks would be material."

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Trump is demanding prosecutors find 'evidence that probably doesn't exist': legal expert

Former President Donald Trump recently made a demand that special counsel Jack Smith turn over evidence as part of the discovery process to help him prove the 2020 election was really "stolen" from him.

While such evidence would likely be helpful to Trump at his upcoming election subversion trial, it also is highly unlikely to actually exist since multiple recounts and audits have repeatedly affirmed that Trump legitimately lost the 2020 election.

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Jack Smith tells judge: Nothing in Trump's appeal stops the Jan. 6 trial

Special counsel Jack Smith filed a short response to Donald Trump's demand to delay his trial about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attacks. According to Smith, there's no good reason to delay pending appeal.

"The Court should not assume at this juncture that no issue can arise that is not involved in the appeal," wrote the Justice Department team. "Likewise, nothing about the defendant’s appeal prevents the Court from continuing to enforce — including, if necessary, by ordering briefing or holding hearings — the protective orders governing discovery ... and the order imposing conditions of release on the defendant. ... In addition, while the appeal is pending, the Court can make headway on the motions already before it, including the defendant’s motions to dismiss based on statutory grounds and selective and vindictive prosecution."

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Revealed: New bombshell filing contains interviews with Trump intel officials

Late Saturday special counsel Jack Smith's office submitted a 45-page filing that contained the results of extensive interviews with senior intelligence officials who worked under Donald Trump, all of whom undercut his claims of outside 2020 presidential election interference.

According to a report from Politico's Kyle Cheney, the filing is designed to put a halt to the former president's legal team's fishing expedition to "access a broad swath of classified intelligence as part of his defense against charges that he conspired to subvert the 2020 election."

Part of Trump's defense, after being accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election results, is based, in part, on his contention that there was foreign interference.

Writing in the filing, senior assistant special counsel Thomas Windom bluntly stated: "The answer from every single official was no.”

More importantly, Cheney wrote, the filing exposes the wide swath of officials who have provided information and guidance to Department of Justice investigators.

According to the report Trump’s “former DNI, former acting secretary of DHS, former acting deputy secretary of DHS, former CISA director, former acting CISA director, former CISA senior cyber counsel, former national security adviser, former deputy NSA, former chief of staff to the National Security Council, former chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, presidential intelligence briefer, former secretary of Defense and former DOJ leadership” were questioned if there was any evidence that foreign or domestic agents interfered with the election totals to which the answer was none.

ALSO READ: How Trump’s mouth is killing American exceptionalism

"Saturday’s filing adds to a collection of data points that reveal the extraordinarily wide aperture of Smith’s investigation," wrote Politico's Cheney.

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Trump could go to 'maximum security' prison so 'fanatical followers' can’t 'break him out'

If convicted in any of his four pending criminal trials, incarcerating former President Donald Trump would present a massive logistical challenge for the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Experts have varying opinions on how a former president of the United States would be imprisoned.

Newsweek recently interviewed four different criminal justice experts who weighed in on how Trump's prison sentence could be handled by the BOP and the US Secret Service (USSS). Because the USSS is required to provide him with a personal security detail for the rest of his life as an ex-president, trial attorney Tray Gober told Newsweek that Trump's incarceration would be "unique."

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'His client disagrees': Legal expert highlights split between Trump and his campaign

Donald Trump and his campaign are saying different things in a rare instance of the two being off message, a legal expert said on Friday.

Earlier on Friday, Trump suffered a loss when an appeals court mostly affirmed a gag order that was previously stayed. The appellate panel however limited the order, saying Special Counsel Jack Smith is fair game for attacks.

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