DOJ Says NFW To Trump Demand That Documents Case Be Scheduled For NEVER

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On Monday, Donald Trump's lawyers moved for an indefinite continuance of the documents prosecution in Florida.

"This extraordinary case presents a serious challenge to both the fact and perception of our American democracy," they wrote, urging Judge Aileen Cannon to "implement an approach which postpones establishment of any trial date."

In support of the proposition that the Speedy Trial Act would allow such a thing, they cited to United States v. Hatfield, 466 F. App'x 775, 777 (11th Cir. 2012), an unreported and largely irrelevant case involving a defendant who claimed his lawyer had failed to tell him that he'd waived the speedy trial requirement. (Thanks to my podcast partner for chasing down that particular rabbit trail.)

Trump also previewed his defense in the case, in which he clearly intends to challenge everything from the warrant to the constitutionality of the special counsel regulations and the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA).

"The legal questions are significant and present issues of first impression," his attorneys intoned gravely, warning that "The intersection between the Presidential Records Act and the various criminal statutes at issue has never been addressed by any court, and in the Defendants' view, will result in a dismissal of the indictment."

Safe to say that the government is not persuaded that the trial of the former president and his valet Walt Nauta should be postponed for never. In a response last night, the prosecutors argued that "there is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the Defendants provide none."

"A speedy trial is a foundational requirement of the Constitution and the United States Code, not a Government preference that must be justified," they continue, scoffing that the claim that the Presidential Records Act of 1978 is a wild-eyed new legal theory "borders on frivolous."

The Defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal of the Indictment, and the Government will respond promptly. But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it "novel," and then claim that the Court will require an indefinite continuance in order to resolve it.

Moreover, the DOJ notes that it has gone out of its way to produce discovery documents expeditiously, and in a maximally convenient format:

[T]he Defendants have failed to include important information about the Government's discovery productions, including the steps the Government has taken to make the Defendants' review as efficient as possible. For example, the Government's production included a set of "key" documents referenced in the Indictment or otherwise determined by the Government to be pertinent to the case. See ECF No. 30 at 2. In addition, for the Defendants' convenience, the Government included with its first production a Discovery Log, which denoted by Bates range the source of the material. Although the Government's production included over 800,000 pages, the set of "key" documents was only about 4,500 pages. 2 The Government similarly identified to the Defendants a small subset of "key" CCTV footage referenced in the Indictment or otherwise pertinent to the case.

Finally, the government takes issue with the argument that classified evidence in the case (which Trump's counsel consistently refers to as "purportedly classified") necessitates an open-ended delay. Moreover, they warn that they're not going to simply roll over and accept Trump's demand that CIPA not apply to this case because "there should simply be no 'secret' evidence, nor any facts concealed from public view relative to the prosecution of a leading Presidential candidate by his political opponent."

"If Defendants intend to seek permission to disclose classified information to the public, that would be the very type of 'graymail' CIPA was enacted to prevent," they write.

Guess we'll find out whose arguments carry the day on Tuesday as the parties conduct their first CIPA conference before Judge Cannon. If past is prologue, things are about to go totally off the rails, but ... who knows?

US v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

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