WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt of court for continuing to file briefs in the now-paused criminal case.
The case — in which Trump faces four charges related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat — has been on hold since Dec. 13 as a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel weighs the ex-president’s theory that he is immune from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan placed the hold and lifted the deadlines in the case because Trump’s appeal, if successful, could torpedo the criminal case against him. That would remove any need for a trial, still scheduled to begin March 4, 2024.
In the meantime, Smith has continued to adhere to the deadlines the Barack Obama appointee had initially set, making two public filings that John Lauro, Trump’s lead lawyer in Washington, argued warranted a contempt charge.
On Dec. 18, Smith filed a notice that he had provided Trump with a draft exhibit list he planned to use at trial. Chutkan notes in her order that Smith also provided additional discovery to Trump the day before.
Smith’s second filing, on Dec. 27, was a 20-page motion in limine urging Chutkan to block Trump from introducing “irrelevant information” during trial and prevent him from injecting politics into the proceeding.
In his motion to show cause filed Jan. 4, Lauro argued that Smith wanted to “weaponize the stay to spread political propaganda” while Trump is unable to respond.
“Worse, the prosecutors have announced their intention to continue this partisan-driven misconduct indefinitely, effectively converting this court’s docket into an arm of the Biden campaign,” Lauro wrote.
Chutkan wrote in her opinion Thursday that Smith was allowed to make these filings, as the deadlines in the case had been “held in abeyance” rather than “permanently vacated.”
“The court cannot conclude that merely receiving discovery or an exhibit list constitutes a meaningful burden,” Chutkan wrote. “That receipt requires no response.”
But Chutkan did agree with Lauro that the motion in limine was “substantive” and required Trump’s legal team to review it to determine whether it had any connection to his appeal before the D.C. Circuit and thus require a response.
“While that is not a major burden, it is a cognizable one,” Chutkan said. “Accordingly, the court will adopt defendant’s recommendation that the parties be forbidden from filing any further substantive pretrial motions without first seeking leave from the court.”
She clarified that her decision did not reflect a conclusion that the special counsel had violated the stay order and should be hit with a contempt charge, rather that it only aimed to support the order’s purpose.
The stay will likely remain in place for the remainder of the month, and potentially throughout February, as Trump is expected to appeal any negative ruling by a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel to the full bench or to the Supreme Court.
At oral arguments on Jan. 9, a panel made up of U.S. Circuit Judges Florence Pan, Michelle Childs and Karen Henderson — two Joe Biden appointees and a George H.W. Bush appointee, respectively — seemed unlikely to accept Trump’s theory of absolute presidential immunity.
Pan wondered aloud whether the theory would prevent prosecution of former presidents who clearly break the law through official means, such as selling pardons to business associates, selling military secrets to a foreign adversary or ordering Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.
Trump’s appellate lawyer, John Sauer of firm James Otis, held that a former president could only be held criminally liable for actions taken in office if they are first impeached and convicted by Congress. Without a conviction, Sauer insisted, there should be no other method to prosecute former chief executives.
Trump was impeached twice by the House of Representatives, first in 2019 for withholding military aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into Biden, but he was ultimately acquitted by the Senate. He was again impeached in 2021 inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, and again acquitted in the Senate.
Trump’s primary strategy in the case has been to delay the proceedings as much as possible — a strategy also employed in his three other criminal cases in New York, Georgia and Florida — in the hopes he can push a trial off until or close enough to the 2024 presidential election in November.
Increasingly, the fate of Trump’s cases and reelection hopes are in the Supreme Court’s hands, as they have agreed to hear a case regarding whether Trump should be disqualified from 2024 ballots for his role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
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