Former President Donald Trump’s legal team asked for more time to file motions in the federal election obstruction case before his March 2024 trial, and a federal court in Washington, D.C., has granted their request.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court issued the ruling, which is a modest win for Trump’s legal team. They requested more time in court documents to prepare their arguments for the claim made by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
The judge granted President Trump a little extension for filing motions, but largely rejected his attorney’s attempts to postpone the trial dates. She denied the former president’s request that some court documents from the government pertaining to secret information be made public in her ruling.
Long deadline extensions for anticipated defence dispositive actions, such as motions to dismiss, were not justified, according to her order. The motions wouldn’t be fully briefed until January 2024 if the court granted the proposed sixty-day extension of the briefing deadline.
Even though the former president requested sixty days, Judge Chutkan only granted him two further weeks to submit pre-trial court motions. A variety of motions must be filed by October 23 in order for the lawsuit to be dismissed. Additionally, the judge granted the Trump attorneys’ request to submit objections regarding the case’s secret evidence.
It took place a short while after Trump’s attorneys stated in court documents that they required further time to consider how to evaluate classified information in the case. Along with that, they added that they are “seeking a fair opportunity for reasonable adversary proceedings” in relation to the materials. They claimed that the secret evidence Smith’s office provided them with could only be briefly viewed by solicitors and was of insufficient length.
“Our review was brief and preliminary,” the motion said. But it’s obvious that the president has a right to see any additional information that the US intelligence community or other parts of the executive branch may have.
According to the article, some members of Trump’s legal team lack the necessary security credentials to examine the evidence.
Third, as previously said, due to limitations on one of the key papers in the classified discovery, we are currently precluded from submitting requests to the Special Counsel’s Office or the Court regarding the document’s content, according to a letter from his attorneys. Therefore, even though we want to submit discovery requests and motions to compel, we are unable to use those procedures as of this filing.
Federal prosecutors claimed that the former president’s request for the application to be dismissed was an effort to “delay the proceedings” and that there were not many classified papers involved in the case.