Jack Smith (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, Pool), Donald Trump (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Former President Donald Trump's high-profile criminal defense attorneys in the Mar-a-Lago case have asked the judge to push trial past the 2024 election, claiming special counsel Jack Smith's "ongoing discovery failures" are to blame.
The memo from lawyers Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche, filed Wednesday in Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's court, continued wrangling with Smith over the trial date in the willful retention of classified information case, bashing the "accelerated schedule that the prosecutors have not followed and that in all likelihood will require multiple rounds of CIPA litigation."
CIPA — the Classified Information Procedures Act — and its § 4 outlines rules for discovery of classified information by defendants, such as Trump and his Mar-a-Lago co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.
Trump and his team asked Judge Cannon to push the trial past the election — "until at least mid-November 2024, in light of additional, ongoing discovery failures by the Special Counsel's Office" — noting that Trump's Jan. 6 federal trial in Washington, D.C., is on the horizon in March and that Trump's civil fraud trial is currently causing "scheduling challenges" for Kise, who is currently representing the former president in the New York case.
"[Kise] has therefore had no opportunity to review any of the CIPA materials or to participate in the preparation of the defense," a footnote said. "President Trump should not be denied the assistance of core counsel in a matter of this significance due to the Government's delayed discovery process."
Trump lawyers asserted that Jack Smith is in "non-compliance" with his representation to Cannon that "'all' discovery would be available on 'day one,'" claiming "discovery is not complete in this case—including with respect to the classified documents at issue in more than 25% of the § 793(e) counts in the Superseding Indictment. "
Before reiterating their demand for a post-2024 election trial date in the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump's lawyers also accused the special counsel of making "an empty threat":
The Office also argues that, if the Court does not grant the CIPA § 4 motion under the Office's preferred conditions, it "cannot produce the documents at all." (Opp'n at 8 (emphasis in original)). That is an empty threat. If the Office cannot use CIPA in a permissible fashion to comply with its discovery obligations, the appropriate remedy will be dismissal.
In closing, the Trump's lawyers said that the former president's "lack of access" to "basic discovery" up to this point, combined with the challenges of litigating numerous pending cases in multiple jurisdictions, should push the Mar-a-Lago trial past the 2024 election.
"These are not mere 'complaints,'" Kise and Blanche emphasized. "The Special Counsel's Office has not provided some of the most basic discovery in the case. Given the current schedule, we cannot understate the prejudice to President Trump arising from his lack of access to these critical materials months after they should have been produced."
Back in July, Judge Cannon preliminarily set the Mar-a-Lago trial to begin on May 20, 2024.
Read the Trump legal team's memo here.
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