Courts

Trump's Lawyers Seek 'Brief' 60-Day Delay In DC Case Because Motions Are HARD

Two months here, two months there, eventually you're talking about real time!

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Donald Trump is so overwhelmed with legal problems that he hardly has time to shitpost about all his pending court cases. Yesterday, he was so busy calling New York Attorney General Letitia James “racist” and Justice Arthur Engoron a “communist” that he didn’t get around to spewing bile at “radical” Judge Tanya Chutkan, or “deranged” Special Counsel Jack Smith, or even Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is also “racist,” if you can even believe it.

But Judge Chutkan had time for Donald Trump. In fact, she’s going to have lots more time, since last night she denied his motion demanding that she recuse herself from his election interference case. Trump had argued that the judge’s comments as she sentenced two prior January 6 defendants who had tried to deflect blame onto the former president amounted to an expression of bias against the defendant. But, as Judge Chutkan noted, that demand runs counter to both law and Circuit precedent.

“A reasonable person—aware of the statutory requirement that the court address the defendant’s arguments and state its reasons for its sentence—would understand that in making the statements contested here, the court was not issuing vague declarations about third parties’ potential guilt in a hypothetical future case,” she wrote. “[I]nstead, it was fulfilling its duty to expressly evaluate the defendants’ arguments that their sentences should be reduced because other individuals whom they believed were associated with the events of January 6 had not been prosecuted.”

Meanwhile, the parties spent much of last week arguing about the government’s proposed protective order blocking Trump from posting about the court, lawyers, and potential witnesses in this case. Trump marked the occasion by calling for retribution for retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, accusing him of a “treasonous” act, “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Trump’s lawyer John Lauro, is also prone to outlandish accusations. Just last week, he accused the government of timing its request to gag his client to coincide with bad polling for President Biden. In fact, the government filed the same document under seal on September 5, only to have Lauro scream bloody murder about prosecutors failing to satisfy their meet-and-confer obligations, netting himself a couple extra weeks to argue about it under seal. And this week, the streak continues, as Lauro demands a “brief” 60-day delay of the October 9 deadline to file pretrial motions.

“This is the first time in history anyone—let alone a President of the United States—has been charged, in the defense’s view wrongfully, with conspiracies related to a contested election,” Lauro writes, with his characteristic confusion over linear time and the identity of the country’s current chief executive.

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“Defense counsel must research and address issues of extreme constitutional import that require careful analysis and briefing,” he adds, solemnly, noting that he’ll need an extension on his homework so that he can prepare “motions to dismiss relating to executive immunity, failure to state a claim, and improper conduct by the Special Counsel during the grand jury process and in charging decisions, motions for 17(c) subpoenas, potential motions to compel discovery, etc.”

Lauro also filed an indignant objection to the standard ex parte proceedings used to shield classified evidence under the Classified Information Procedures Act, while accusing the government of hiding classified Jencks and Giglio materials “including but not limited to classified emails that witnesses exchanged around the time of the events in question.”

One might be forgiven for thinking that Lauro, who originally asked for a trial date in 2026, is spamming the docket with motion after pointless motion, extracting “brief” delays of five or 14 or 60 days in hopes of pushing this trial off past 2024. If so, the court seems very much not here for it.

In a brief minute order, Judge Chutkan ordered the government to respond to both Lauro’s motions by Tuesday, setting a Friday deadline for Trump’s reply. Presumably by then Trump will have remembered to call Judge Chutkan a radical Marxist engaged in a Democratic Witch Hunt at least five more times.

US v. Trump [DDC Docket via Court Listener]

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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