FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump will hear arguments Friday on a lengthy defense effort to have the indictment dismissed based on the claim that the prosecutor who filed the indictment complaint filed was unlawfully appointed.
Arguments over the legality of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s appointment kick off a three-day hearing that will continue next week and cause further delays in a criminal case that was scheduled for last month but has been riven by a pile-up of unresolved cases . legal disputes. The motion questioning the Justice Department’s selection and financing of Smith is one of several challenges to the indictment that the defense has brought so far without success in the year since the indictment was filed.
Even though Smith’s team appears intent on moving forward in a prosecution that many legal experts see as the clearest and clearest of the four prosecutions against Trump, Friday’s arguments before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will avoid debate over the allegations against the former. president. Instead, they will focus on decades-old regulations governing the appointment of Justice Department special counsels like Smith, reflecting the judge’s continued willingness to entertain defense arguments that prosecutors say are meritless. contributing to the indefinite cancellation of a trial date.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, had already irritated prosecutors before the June 2023 indictment by granting a request from Trump to have an independent arbitrator review the classified documents from Mar-a-Lago — an order that was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel.
She has since come under intense scrutiny over her handling of the case, including because she took months to issue rulings and schedule hearings on legally misleading claims – all of which led to a trial before the presidential election of November has become virtually impossible. She was reprimanded by prosecutors in March after asking both sides to formulate jury instructions and respond to a premise of the case that Smith’s team called “fundamentally flawed.”
The New York Times reported Thursday, citing two anonymous sources, that two judges — including the chief federal judge in the Southern District of Florida — urged Cannon to throw out the case after she was assigned to it.
The hearing comes just weeks after Trump was convicted in a separate state case in New York of falsifying company records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor who said she had sex with him. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is about to issue a landmark opinion on whether Trump is immune from prosecution for actions he put in office, or whether he can be prosecuted by Smith’s team on allegations that he plotted to to overturn results of the 2020 presidential election.
Friday’s hearing will focus on the Trump team’s claim that Smith was illegally appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 because he was not first approved by Congress and because the special counsel office he was assigned to lead was not also established by Congress.
Smith’s team has said that as head of the Justice Department, Garland had full authority to make the appointment and delegate prosecutorial decisions to him. Prosecutors also note that courts have upheld previous appointments of special counsel, including Robert Mueller, by Trump’s Justice Department.
On the agenda for next week are arguments over a limited silence order that prosecutors have sought to bar Trump from comments they fear could jeopardize the safety of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials involved in the case .
The restrictions were requested after Trump falsely claimed that the agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents in August 2022 were prepared to kill him, even as he quoted standard FBI policy language on the use of violence during the execution of house searches. warrants. The FBI deliberately chose a day for the search when it knew Trump and his family would be out of town.
Trump’s lawyers have said any speech restrictions would infringe on his right to free speech. Cannon initially denied the request on a technicality, saying prosecutors had not adequately consulted with attorneys before requesting the joke’s restrictions. But prosecutors then renewed the request.
Another issue that will be discussed next week is a defense request to exclude evidence seized by the FBI during the Mar-a-Lago search from the case, and to dismiss the charges because evidence coming from former members of Trump’s defense team. .
Although attorney-client privilege protects attorneys from having to testify about their confidential conversations with clients, prosecutors can bypass that shield if they can determine that the attorney’s legal services are being used in furtherance of a crime.
That’s what happened last year in the investigation into classified documents, with prosecutors repeatedly citing in their indictment details of conversations Trump had with M. Evan Corcoran, a lawyer who represented the former president during the investigation and who was forced out by a judge to appear in court. grand jury investigates Trump.
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Tucker reported from Washington.
