Federal prosecutor Jack Smith warned a judge presiding over one of the criminal cases against Donald Trump not to be “manipulated” into delaying the trial.
Lawyers for the former president have attempted to have the case in Florida adjourned until after one in Washington, D.C., has taken place because, as they put it, the schedule of trials “currently require[s] President Trump and his lawyers to be in two places at once.”
Smith, a U.S. attorney and special counsel, argued in a court filing entered on Thursday that Trump’s legal counsel had “failed to disclose” that they had filed a motion the prior evening to stay the proceedings in D.C. “until their motion to dismiss the indictment based on presidential immunity is ‘fully resolved.'”
In a typographical error, Smith ended the filing by writing: “This Court should allow itself to be manipulated in this fashion.”
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A spokesperson for Smith’s office confirmed the missing word to Newsweek. “We intended for it to say: ‘This Court should not allow itself to be manipulated in this fashion.'”
Newsweek reached out to a lawyer representing Trump via email for comment on Thursday.
The case in Florida, which is being presided over by Judge Aileen Cannon, regards the retaining of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Florida resort, which were recovered during an FBI raid of the property last summer. Of over 13,000 documents seized, 103 were deemed to be classified.
The documents were thought to have been kept by Trump after he left the White House. Federal law treats classified documents as property of the U.S. government and so must be turned over for archiving when a presidential term ends.
The Florida case is one of two brought against Trump by Smith. Another, in D.C., relates to allegations the former president attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which saw Joe Biden elected. Trump faces several other criminal trials, including one in Georgia on allegations of a conspiracy to unlawfully overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
In all the cases against him, Trump denies any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty.
The former president’s legal team has been attempting for months to delay the start date of the Florida classified documents case until after the 2024 election. The D.C. election fraud case is due to start on March 4, while the documents trial is scheduled to begin on May 20.
At a hearing about the adjournment on Wednesday, Cannon said she would make “reasonable adjustments” to the trial schedule but did not commit to delaying the trial’s start date.
“I’m just having a hard time seeing how realistically this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time, given the realities that we’re facing,” she told the court. Smith’s court filing came following Cannon’s decision.
“As the Government argued to the Court yesterday, the trial date in the District of Columbia case should not be a determinative factor in the Court’s decision whether to modify the dates in this matter,” he wrote. “Trump’s actions in the hours following the hearing in this case illustrate the point and confirm his overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.