'Delay tactics': Jack Smith tears apart Trump’s 'frivolous' arguments for dismissing Mar-a-Lago docs case

08 March 2024

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has agreed to hear two of former President Donald Trump's motions to dismiss in special counsel Jack Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents case. This comes at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is planning to review Trump's presidential immunity argument in another case Smith is prosecuting: the election interference case.

In the documents case, Smith alleges that Trump violated the United States' national security by storing classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House — documents that, according to Smith, Trump had no business removing from Washington, D.C. in 2021. Trump and his lawyers have claimed that the documents were declassified and that he didn't break any laws by moving them to Mar-a-Lago.

Smith has been aggressively fighting back against Trump's efforts to have the two cases thrown out. And the special counsel, according to ABC News reporters Alexander Mallin, Katherine Faulders and Jack Date, is layout out some reasons why Cannon — a Trump appointee — should let the Mar-a-Lago case go to trial instead of dismissing it.

"In a flurry of previously filed motions," the journalists explain in an article published on March 7, "Trump's attorneys had put forward various arguments to dismiss the case — including that Trump was entitled to possess the documents under the Presidential Records Act, that he should be immune from prosecution for removing the documents while still technically in office, that he is being selectively prosecuted in comparison with others who have not faced charges for similar conduct, and that the charges against him are unconstitutionally vague."

Smith's office, the reporters note, "sought to dismantle each of those arguments" in "more than 100 pages of arguments filed" on March 7 and accused Trump and his lawyers of "engaging in delay tactics that have successfully served to stymie Trump's federal election interference prosecution in Washington, D.C."

Mallin Faulders and Date continue, "In their request to Judge Cannon that she reject Trump's arguments that he should be immune from prosecution, they specifically asked her to certify such a claim as 'frivolous.' Doing so would prevent Trump's team from getting the documents case effectively paused while they engage in a lengthy appeals process."

Smith is hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will shoot down Trump's immunity argument in the election interference case. And he is telling Cannon, in the Mar-a-Lago case, that the former president's immunity claims have no merit.

Smith's office told Cannon, "Every criminal charge in the Superseding Indictment is based upon conduct in which Trump engaged after he left office. Even if a former President could claim some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts — and he cannot — Trump could not benefit from any such immunity in this case. Trump's immunity claim here is so wholly without merit that it is difficult to understand it except as part of a strategic effort for delay."

Read ABC News' full report at this link.

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