Lawyers representing former President Donald Trump this week filed a motion to dismiss charges against their client by alleging vindictive prosecutorial bias on the part of special counsel Jack Smith.
Carissa Byrne Hessick, a criminal law professor at the University of North Carolina, read through the filing – and determined that it was "quite awful" and likely to fail.
Writing on Twitter, Hessick explained the necessary elements for such a motion to dismiss to succeed – an occurrence, she added, that is highly rare given how much deference courts give to prosecutors' charging decisions.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
Hessick then went on to explain a grievous error made by Trump's lawyers in citing past cases as precedent for dismissal, when none of those cases mentioned were dismissed on the grounds on which they are basing their claims.
"In setting out the relevant legal standard for selective prosecution, the Trump team tries to portray the case law in a very favorable light by cherry-picking some quotes from cases," she noted. "But none of the cases they cite actually dismissed a case for selective prosecution."
In fact, some of the cherry-picked quotes from past cases do not even say what Trump's lawyers seem to believe, as Hessick says they even cite "a D.C. Circuit opinion from then-Judge Kavanaugh in which he offers one of the most full-throated defenses of prosecutorial discretion I've ever seen!"
Hessick concluded her analysis by writing that even though "the expectations for Trump legal arguments" are "already super low ... this motion is embarrassingly awful and should clearly be denied under current law."
