Jack Smith to Judge Chutkan: Trump trial timeline is in your court

Special counsel Jack Smith opted against proposing a new timeline Friday to bring Donald Trump to trial over his effort to subvert the 2020 election, instead telling U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan it’s entirely up to her.

In a 10-page joint filing with Trump’s attorneys — a response to Chutkan’s request for guidance and a schedule after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity upended the case — Smith emphasized that the timeline for the case is her call.

“The Court’s decisions on how to manage its docket are firmly within its discretion,” prosecutors wrote in the filing submitted late Friday night. They added that they are prepared to advance the case “promptly at any time the Court deems appropriate.”

Rather than propose a timetable, Smith instead simply urged Chutkan to tackle Trump’s many efforts to dismiss the case at roughly the same time. Doing so, prosecutors said, would keep the case moving forward.

The murky stance from the special counsel is a sharp break from the urgency he demanded for much of the last year since he initially charged Trump with several conspiracies related to his effort to derail the transfer of power to Joe Biden. Last year, he urged Chutkan to set a very quick trial date , and then when Trump’s immunity arguments delayed the trial, he asked the Supreme Court in December to expedite the case, urging the justices to move with “extraordinary” speed because “this is an extraordinary case.”

But the justices’ refusal to heed that call — and their ruling in July that effectively immunized Trump from large swaths of the evidence Smith planned to use against him — has forced prosecutors and the Justice Department to recalculate. And they’re not alone: In New York, Trump is trying to harness the immunity decision to delay his Sept. 18 sentencing for his May conviction in the hush money case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg took no position on Trump’s request for a sentencing delay; instead — like Smith in the federal election case — he said he would simply defer to the judge.

Though Smith declined to propose a new schedule for the election case in Friday’s joint filing, Trump’s defense team put forward a specific proposal that would allow pretrial motions in the case to stretch into January. His lawyers also hinted at additional proceedings that could extend deep into 2025. Trump’s team did not propose a trial date but said a trial won’t be necessary because he’ll prevail in getting the case thrown out.

Earlier this week, Smith’s team obtained a revised indictment of Trump that maintained the same four felony charges against the former president but dropped allegations that Trump abused his authority by trying to use the Justice Department as part of his scheme to remain in power. The revisions were an attempt to maintain the case while complying with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

But Trump’s lawyers signaled in their portion of the Friday night filing that, as a result of the immunity decision, prosecutors won’t be able to proceed with much of the rest of the case — including their claim that Trump sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to tally the electoral votes that established Biden’s victory.

If the allegations about Pence can’t be used by prosecutors, their whole case falls apart, Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche argued.

Neither prosecutors nor the defense addressed another way the case might swiftly come to an end: If Trump wins the presidency again in November, he will be in a position to simply call it off after he is sworn in in January.

Notably, the schedule Trump’s lawyers proposed would shift until after the election all litigation about the substance of prosecutors’ case against Trump — the gravest and most politically explosive charges he faces in any of the four criminal cases against him. The only filing due before Election Day would be one in which Trump will argue that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional and the funding the Justice Department is using to pay Smith and his team is illegal.

Chutkan has set a conference in the case for next Thursday to discuss the path forward, but has excused Trump from attending. Neither side is proposing any further hearings in the case before the election.