Jack Smith made an 'interesting and smart' comment to Judge Cannon in hearing: report
Special Counsel Jack Smith is playing legal chess against Trump's lawyers. And the game board is the calendar.
During Friday's hearing in a federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida, the special counsel, who is prosecuting former President Donald Trump in both his classified documents obstruction case as well as his Jan. 6 election subversion case, showed how scheduling a trial date in the docs case could have unspoken maneuvers at play.
The issue was whether Trump is trying to schedule one trial to block another.
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The Washing Post's Devlin Barrett appeared on MSNBC's "Alex Wagner Tonight" to talk about it. He was in court and took notice of Smith bringing up the issue in a crafty way that he thought "was interesting and smart."
And that was when prosecutors, who in his words, said to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, "Look, if you agree with the defense that this trial should begin let's say in August or late August or September, that may be a trick on the part of the defense team to get a trial date so that if and when Trump loses the immunity argument before the Supreme Court, your trial date ends up blocking the D.C. case over the January 6th and 2020 election, and it ends up being a block to that trial going forward."
So in sum, Trump’s lawyer's "alternative to waiting until after the election might complicate scheduling for a trial in D.C."
The thinking there is Trump can buy enough time before he possibly becomes the GOP nominee (which he is for now the frontrunner) and defeats President Joe Biden to then appoint an Attorney General who tosses the federal cases.
Notably, the 45th president has shouted to the hilltops that he's completely absolved from any kind of criminal prosecution. That claim was destroyed by the D.C. Court of Appeals decision.
Since then, the Supreme Court is weighing in on the matter that will likely drag on for some time.
For Cannon, she didn't land on any specific date and instead teased a number of pretrial hearings that would be held to deal with a dozen defense motions.
For flexibility, she said, “There needs to be some space in the schedule."