Smith, Jack (Attorney)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Asks Judge Chutkan to Air His Federal Election Trial on TV

      by

      The request to Judge Tanya Chutkan was short on legal arguments and long on bluster, and it faces an uphill battle as federal courts generally prohibit cameras.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump have told a judge that she should permit his trial on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election to be televised live from the courtroom.It was the first time that Mr. Trump has formally weighed in on the issue of whether to broadcast any of the four criminal trials he is facing. His motion to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal election trial in Washington, came after similar requests made by several media organizations and was filed late on Friday.A judge in Georgia who is handling Mr. Trump’s state election subversion case has said that proceeding will be televised. But the request to Judge Chutkan is likely to face an uphill battle given that federal rules of criminal procedure — and the Supreme Court — generally prohibit cameras in federal courtrooms.Mr. Trump’s motion for a televised trial came in a filing adopting his bombastic and combative style.In the motion, his lawyers argued that a televised trial was needed because the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had “sought to proceed in secret” with the election case, even though the prosecution has attracted enormous attention from the news media, had several public hearings and had countless rounds of court papers filed on a public docket.The lawyers also used the motion to complain, as they have at almost every opportunity, that Mr. Trump has been treated “unfairly” by the Biden administration even though the election case — and another federal case in which Mr. Trump stands accused of mishandling classified documents — have been overseen by Mr. Smith, an independent prosecutor.It is little surprise that Mr. Trump, a former reality television star, would want to have the trial broadcast live from Federal District Court in Washington.As his testimony this past week in his civil fraud trial in New York has shown, he has opted to pursue a strategy of creating noisy conflict to obscure the legal issues underpinning his cases and to use the proceedings to amplify the message of victimhood and grievance that sits at the heart of his re-election campaign.Mr. Trump’s Friday night filing to Judge Chutkan was a sharp turn from his stance on the issue last week when prosecutors told Judge Chutkan, at his request, in their filing that his lawyers were taking “no position” on televising the trial.In that filing, prosecutors working for Mr. Smith also told Judge Chutkan that televising the trial was “clearly foreclosed” by federal rules.The prosecutors acknowledged that the public and the media had “a constitutional right of access” to the trial. But that, they claimed, was “the right to attend a criminal trial — not the right to broadcast it.”Mr. Trump’s filing ignored these arguments and instead relied on his usual mix of bluster and belligerence.“In sum,” his lawyers wrote, “President Trump absolutely agrees, and in fact demands, that these proceedings should be fully televised so that the American public can see firsthand that this case, just like others, is nothing more than a dreamt-up unconstitutional charade that should never be allowed to happen again.” More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Puts Off Decision on Whether to Delay Trump Documents Trial

      by

      Judge Aileen M. Cannon said she would meet with prosecutors and defense lawyers in March to settle on a schedule for the former president’s trial in federal court in Florida.A federal judge on Friday put off until at least March the fraught and consequential decision of whether to delay the start of former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of illegally holding on to a trove of highly classified national security secrets after he left office.But acknowledging “the evolving complexities” in the proceeding, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, also said it would be “prudent” to push back several deadlines she had set for pretrial motions to be filed, especially those involving the classified materials at the heart of the case.While Judge Cannon’s ruling left the question of the trial’s timing unresolved, it staked out a temporary middle ground between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and federal prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.Mr. Trump’s legal team, pursuing a persistent strategy of delay, has repeatedly asked the judge to postpone the trial until after the 2024 election. Prosecutors under Mr. Smith have admitted that the case is complicated, but have asked Judge Cannon to hold the line and stick to the current trial date of May 20.At a hearing last week in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, signaled that she was ready to make some “reasonable adjustments” to the timing of the case. She expressed concern in particular that her trial in Florida might “collide” with Mr. Trump’s other federal trial, a Washington-based proceeding on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election that is set to begin in early March.In an order on Friday explaining her decision, Judge Cannon reiterated her concern that the schedules for the two federal trials “as they currently stand overlap substantially.” That, she noted, could make it difficult to ensure that Mr. Trump had “adequate time to prepare for trial and to assist in his defense.”But Judge Cannon also said that Mr. Trump’s legal calendar — he is facing a total of four criminal cases — was “less important at this stage” than the challenges presented by the large volume of discovery evidence that the defense needs to digest. It was also less significant, she said, than the various difficulties involved in handling the sensitive materials at the center of the case under a law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA.Judge Cannon’s ruling left open the chance that the very sort of collision she has worried about might eventually take place. As part of her decision, she set a hearing on March 1 to determine the schedule for her case in Fort Pierce. That is only three days before Mr. Trump’s election subversion case is supposed to begin in Washington.Her ruling also did not foreclose the possibility that she might at some point delay the trial until after the election — a move that would be a major victory for Mr. Trump. Were that to happen, and were Mr. Trump to win the race, he could have the case thrown out entirely simply by ordering his attorney general to drop the charges.Notably absent from Judge Cannon’s ruling was any mention of how the trial calendar might intersect with Mr. Trump’s increasingly busy campaign schedule. It has been a challenge to find ample time for each of Mr. Trump’s four trials not merely in relation to one another, but also against the backdrop of a rapidly approaching set of primary elections and the Republican Party’s nominating convention in July.Judge Cannon chose to ignore Mr. Trump’s political calendar and to focus instead on logistical matters related to the nuts and bolts of the case. She pushed back several of her initial filing deadlines because of delays in constructing a secure facility in which she could review classified materials and because at least one lawyer in the case only recently obtained a full security clearance.She also said she was anticipating that the legal battles between the defense and the prosecution over how many — and precisely which — classified materials should be handed over as part of the discovery process would be “more robust than initially forecasted.”These fights, conducted under CIPA, she said, would require her to conduct a review of a “significant volume of information,” conduct more hearings and consider motions by the defense for additional disclosures. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Asks Appeals Court to Throw Out Election Case Gag Order

      by

      The former president’s lawyers claimed he was being muzzled in the midst of a campaign, but their filing exaggerated the constraints put on him by the order.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked an appeals court in Washington on Wednesday to throw out the gag order imposed on him in the federal case in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, calling it an effort to “muzzle” a presidential candidate “at the height of his re-election campaign.”“No court has ever imposed a gag order on the political speech of a candidate for public office, let alone the leading candidate for president of the United States — until now,” D. John Sauer, a lawyer who is handling the appeal for Mr. Trump, wrote.Mr. Sauer’s entreaty to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was merely the latest in a dizzying round of back-and-forth moves involving the gag order, which was put in place last month to keep Mr. Trump from targeting members of the court’s staff, prosecutors or witnesses involved in his election interference case in Federal District Court in Washington.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who initially imposed the order, paused it briefly three weeks ago to consider some issues involving the appeal, but then reinstated it at the request of prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, after Mr. Trump continued to violate its provisions.Not long after, the appeals court itself temporarily suspended the order as it mulled Mr. Trump’s request for a more sustained pause. The gag order, at least for the moment, remains in abeyance as the appeals court works over the next two weeks to determine if it should have been issued in the first place.Many of the arguments raised in Mr. Sauer’s 67-page filing to the appeals court have appeared in other guises during the protracted battle over the order. Gagging Mr. Trump, he wrote, was an unconstitutional “prior restraint” not only on the former president’s First Amendment rights, but also on those of “over 100 million Americans” who deserve to hear what he has to say.Moreover, the order improperly limited Mr. Trump’s remarks in the middle of his presidential campaign — a moment, Mr. Sauer argued, when he enjoyed “heightened First Amendment interests as a political candidate.”Like other lawyers who have sought to have Mr. Trump freed from the gag order, Mr. Sauer at times exaggerated the strictures it imposed on the former president.He claimed, for instance, that the order barred Mr. Trump from making statements “about key aspects of his prosecution at the hands of the administration he is seeking to replace” — issues, he added, that were “inextricably entwined” with Mr. Trump’s run for office.In fact, when Judge Chutkan put the order in place, she explicitly permitted Mr. Trump to criticize President Biden, his administration or what Mr. Trump characterizes as the political nature of the prosecution. But Mr. Trump was not allowed to go after any members of her court staff, Mr. Smith or members of his staff, or anyone who might reasonably be expected to testify at the trial.Mr. Smith’s team had asked for the gag order to be put in place amid what they called Mr. Trump’s “near daily” social media messages attacking Mr. Smith, other prosecutors on the case and even Judge Chutkan herself.But Mr. Sauer scoffed at the prosecutors’ claims that Mr. Trump’s remarks, however threatening, had led to actual harassment or threats against anyone covered by the order.Mr. Sauer’s filing said that he intended to seek emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court if the appeals court upheld any portion of the gag order. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Assail Trump’s Bid to Have Federal Election Case Dismissed

      by

      Prosecutors said that Mr. Trump’s barrage of motions to have the case tossed out were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to reject a barrage of motions filed last month by former President Donald J. Trump that sought to toss out the indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said his claims were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”In a 79-page court filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, went one by one through Mr. Trump’s multiple motions to dismiss the case and accused him and his lawyers of essentially trying to flip the script of the four-count indictment filed against him in August.“The defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment, claiming that it charges him with wholly innocuous, perhaps even admirable conduct, — sharing his opinions about election fraud and seeking election integrity,” James I. Pearce, one of the prosecutors, wrote, “when in fact it clearly describes the defendant’s fraudulent use of knowingly false statements as weapons in furtherance of his criminal plans.”When Mr. Trump first filed his motions to dismiss the case, they represented a breathtaking effort to reframe the various steps he took to remain in power after losing the election as something other than crimes.For example, Mr. Trump sought to portray his repeated efforts to use false claims that the election had been stolen as “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He similarly tried to recast his lies about the election as “opinions” that he tried to use to build support for his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the results of the race.But Mr. Pearce shot back on Monday for the Justice Department, saying that the First Amendment did not protect “criminal conduct” like using lies in a plot to defeat the will of the voters. He also wrote that Mr. Trump’s efforts to recast the meaning of the special counsel’s indictment in his own favor were “based on an inaccurate and self-serving characterization of the charges.”In a separate motion, Thomas P. Windom, another prosecutor on the case, rejected Mr. Trump’s arguments that the charges should be dismissed because they are part of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.”As part of their flurry of filings last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to paint the election interference case as “a retaliatory response” by President Biden to go after Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.The lawyers made those accusations even though the indictment had been brought by Mr. Smith, an independent special counsel, and after an extensive grand jury investigation.Mr. Windom responded to the claims by noting they were “spurious” and “contrived from two newspaper articles citing anonymous sources.” Appearing to get his back up, he also mounted an angry defense of his colleagues on Mr. Smith’s team.“The special counsel and career prosecutors in the special counsel’s office collectively have served in the Department of Justice for decades,” Mr. Windom wrote. “They have sworn oaths to support and defend the Constitution, and they have faithfully executed their prosecutorial duties in this case.”As part of his selective prosecution claims, Mr. Trump had argued that even though he was not the first candidate in U.S. history to have created alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College in an effort to win an election, he was the only one to have suffered criminal charges for having done so.Mr. Windom acknowledged that alternate slates had indeed been sparingly used going back to the time of Thomas Jefferson. But he maintained that “none of the historical examples the defendant points to involved deceitful and corrupt efforts” to “block the certification of the legitimate results of a presidential election.”In yet a third filing, prosecutors rebuffed Mr. Trump’s attempt to strike from the indictment any mention of the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As part of their motions to dismiss, his lawyers had asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to remove all references to the Capitol attack from the case given that none of the charges explicitly accuses Mr. Trump of inciting the mob of his supporters that stormed the building.But writing for the government, Molly Gaston, a prosecutor in Mr. Smith’s office, asserted that Mr. Trump was “responsible for the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6” despite the lack of an incitement charge and that evidence about the attack was instrumental to the government’s case.“That day was the culmination of the defendant’s criminal conspiracies to overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election,” Ms. Gaston wrote.The series of filings on Monday was the second time Mr. Smith’s office has rebutted Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election case thrown out before it goes to trial. Last month, they assailed his initial motion to dismiss, rejecting sweeping claims that he enjoys “absolute immunity” from prosecution because the indictment arose from actions he took while in the White House.Last week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to put the case on hold entirely as she considered the immunity claims — another example of the former president’s long-running efforts to delay the proceeding for as long as possible.On Monday, Ms. Gaston asked Judge Chutkan to deny the request to pause the case.“The defendant has an established record of attempting to disrupt and delay the court’s carefully considered trial date and pretrial schedule,” she wrote. “Now the defendant has timed his motion to stay these proceedings for maximum disruptive effect.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Is Temporarily Free From Gag Order in Election Case

      by

      A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington lifted the order for at least two weeks, freeing the former president to say what he wants about prosecutors and witnesses.An appeals court in Washington on Friday paused the gag order imposed on former President Donald J. Trump in the federal case accusing him of seeking to overturn the 2020 election, temporarily freeing him to go back to attacking the prosecutors and witnesses involved in the proceeding.In a brief order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the pause of about two weeks was needed to give it “sufficient opportunity” to decide whether to enact a longer freeze as the court considered the separate — and more important — issue of whether the gag order had been correctly imposed in the first place.The panel’s ruling came in response to an emergency request to lift the order pending appeal that Mr. Trump’s lawyers filed on Thursday night. While the judges — all three of whom were appointed by Democrats — paused the gag order until at least Nov. 20 to permit additional papers to be filed, they wrote in their decision on Friday that the brief stay “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits” of Mr. Trump’s broader motion for a more sustained pause.The gag order, which was put in place last month by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in Federal District Court in Washington, has now been frozen, reinstated and frozen again. The protracted battle, with its back-and-forth filings and multiple reversals, has pitted two visions of Mr. Trump against each other.Prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, have repeatedly tried to portray the former president as a serial abuser of social media whose often belligerent posts about people involved in the election subversion case have had dangerous effects in the real world.Mr. Trump’s lawyers, by contrast, have sought, without evidence, to paint Judge Chutkan’s order as an attempt by President Biden to “silence” his chief opponent in the 2024 election as the race heats up. The former president’s lawyers have argued that the order undermines Mr. Trump’s First Amendment rights to express one of the central messages of his campaign: that the four criminal prosecutions brought against him in the past several months are a form of political persecution.Mr. Trump appears to have paid close attention to the various iterations of the order, and the most recent pause opened the possibility that he could return to making threatening posts that violated the initial restrictions that Judge Chutkan put in place.Her written order barred Mr. Trump from targeting members of her court staff, Mr. Smith or members of his staff, or any people who might reasonably be called to appear as witnesses at trial.The previous time the gag order was lifted — a move Judge Chutkan herself undertook — Mr. Trump almost immediately assailed Mr. Smith as “deranged.”He also made at least two public comments that appeared to target his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who could be called as a witness in the case. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Hints at a Delay in Trump Documents Trial

      by

      Responding to a request from the former president’s lawyers, Judge Aileen Cannon said she could make “reasonable adjustments” to the timetable for the trial, which is scheduled to start in May.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents signaled on Wednesday that she was inclined to make some “reasonable adjustments” to the timing of the case, expressing concern that it could “collide” with Mr. Trump’s other federal trial.Speaking during a hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, did not specify how she planned to change the schedule of the documents case and said she would soon issue a written order with the details.But she seemed skeptical that the trial date in the documents case — now set for May 20 — could comfortably coexist with Mr. Trump’s Washington-based trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, which is set to start in early March.“I’m having a hard time seeing, realistically, how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time period,” Judge Cannon said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

    • 63 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      What Is a Gag Order?

      by

      At issue in the hearing on Monday is whether Judge Tanya S. Chutkan should impose a gag order on former President Donald J. Trump in the federal election subversion case.Gag orders can forbid people to publicly discuss a case or aspects of it. In this dispute, Jack Smith, the special counsel, has asked Judge Chutkan to bar Mr. Trump from publicly making “disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating” public statements about witnesses, the District of Columbia jury pool, or the judge and prosecutors themselves.Doing so would raise tricky First Amendment issues as Mr. Trump makes another bid for the White House in a campaign that is partly defined by the criminal cases against him — and in which one of his rivals for the Republican nomination, former Vice President Mike Pence, is also a potential witness.There is not a lot of precedent to guide Judge Chutkan’s decision. Gag orders are more typically imposed on defense lawyers instead of defendants, who under normal circumstances tend not to talk publicly about their cases out of self-interest.And gag orders are more typically about preventing the jury from being tainted by hearing about the case outside the courtroom, while Mr. Smith has focused on the risk that Mr. Trump’s attacks may inspire threats or violence against participants in the process.Like any other judicial order, a gag order that is defied can be treated as a matter of contempt of court. To uphold the court’s authority and otherwise maintain order, judges can order contempt proceedings, which could result in a reprimand, fine or imprisonment.How contempt proceedings work, however, is very complicated. There is no single rule that regulates what should happen, making it hard to say exactly how it would play out if Judge Chutkan were to impose such an order on Mr. Trump and then decide that he had violated it.There are different rules for situations in which judges have direct knowledge of the misconduct and those in which they have indirectly heard allegations. Judges can also treat contempt as a civil or a criminal matter depending in part on whether their focus is more to coerce future compliance or to punish past disobedience.Depending on the factors, judges can sometimes summarily impose a fine of up to $1,000 and a sentence of up to six months in prison. But in other cases, they must seek the appointment of a prosecutor and a jury trial would follow.In the instance of a trial, a federal rule of criminal procedure states that “if the criminal contempt involves disrespect toward or criticism of a judge, that judge is disqualified from presiding at the contempt trial or hearing unless the defendant consents.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Ask if Trump Will Blame His Lawyers as Defense in Election Case

      by

      The special counsel asked a judge to require the former president to disclose whether he would blame poor legal advice for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.Federal prosecutors asked a judge on Tuesday to force former President Donald J. Trump to tell them months before he goes to trial on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election whether he intends to defend himself by blaming the stable of lawyers around him at the time for giving him poor legal advice.In a motion filed to the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, the prosecutors sought an order that would compel Mr. Trump to tell them by Dec. 18 if he plans to pursue the blame-the-lawyers strategy — known as an advice of counsel defense — at his federal election interference trial, which is now set to begin in March in Federal District Court in Washington.Both Mr. Trump and his current team of lawyers have “repeatedly and publicly announced” that they were going to use such arguments as “a central component of his defense,” prosecutors told Judge Chutkan in their filing. They said they wanted a formal order forcing Mr. Trump to tell them his plans by mid-December “to prevent disruption of the pretrial schedule and delay of the trial.”The early notification could also give prosecutors a tactical edge in the case. Defendants who pursue advice of counsel arguments waive the shield of attorney-client privilege that would normally protect their dealings with their lawyers. And, as prosecutors reminded Judge Chutkan, if Mr. Trump heads in this direction, he would have to give them not only all of the “communications or evidence” concerning the lawyers he plans to use as part of his defense, but also any “otherwise-privileged communications” that might be used to undermine his claims.Lawyers have been at the heart of the election interference case almost from the moment prosecutors first began issuing grand jury subpoenas to witnesses in the spring of 2022. Many of the subpoenas sought information about lawyers like John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, who entered Mr. Trump’s orbit around the time of the election and were instrumental in advising him about a scheme to create false slates of electors that declared him the winner of key swing states that had actually been won by his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.The subpoenas also sought information about other lawyers, like Jenna Ellis and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had not only advised Mr. Trump on the false elector plan, but had helped him advance claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud.Moreover, lawyers from both Mr. Trump’s administration and his presidential campaign proved to be key witnesses in the investigation that began under the Justice Department and then was handed off to prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith.And when charges were finally filed against Mr. Trump, accusing him of three overlapping conspiracies to remain in power despite the will of the voters, the indictment identified six unnamed co-conspirators — most, if not all, of whom were lawyers as well.In their motion to Judge Chutkan, prosecutors noted that at least 25 witnesses in their sprawling investigation had withheld information based on assertions of attorney-client privilege. Those people, the prosecutors said, included Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators, some of his former campaign employees, some “outside attorneys” and “even a family member of the defendant,” who was not further identified.While prosecutors acknowledged that they were not entirely sure if Mr. Trump intended to raise an advice of counsel defense — or whether he was even legally entitled to do so — they did take note of the public statements that he and his current legal team have made suggesting that such arguments might be used at trial.The prosecutors pointed out that three days after Mr. Trump was arraigned in the case, one of his lawyers, John F. Lauro, made the rounds of the Sunday TV news shows, describing how Mr. Trump had been charged for “following legal advice” from Mr. Eastman, whom he described as “an esteemed scholar.”Weeks later, in an online interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, prosecutors said, Mr. Trump himself made similar claims. In their filing, they wrote that Mr. Trump claimed he had “some lawyers” who had advised him “that a particular course of action described in the indictment was appropriate.”In a separate filing on Tuesday, prosecutors sought to get a jump on what is certain to be the difficult process of picking a jury for the trial.Citing Mr. Trump’s “continued use of social media as a weapon of intimidation” — an issue that has come up in the government’s request for a gag order to be placed on the former president — the prosecutors asked Judge Chutkan to impose restrictions on information about potential jurors and those who are ultimately picked to serve.The prosecutors asked that no one involved in the case be allowed to publicly disclose information about the jurors gleaned during the selection process, in order to protect them “from intimidation and fear.”They also asked Judge Chutkan to consider arranging “for jurors to gain discreet entry into and out of the courthouse” once the trial begins. More