Trump team will seek dismissal of federal election subversion case as each side mulls the next steps
Lawyers for Donald Trump intend to urge a judge to dismiss the federal election subversion case againstthe former president after a Supreme Court opinion that narrowed the scope of the landmark prosecution, according to a court filing.
The defense team, in a joint filing late Friday with prosecutors that lays out dueling proposals for the next steps, foreshadowed a series of anticipated challenges that would draw out until deep into next year the criminal case charging Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Those include arguments that a new and more limited indictment issued by prosecutors this past week still contains allegations for which Trump, as a former president, is entitled to immunity, such as his conversations with his then-vice president, Mike Pence.
Defense lawyers also intend “as a threshold matter” to seek the dismissal of the case on the same grounds that a federal judge in Florida cited last month in tossing out a separate prosecution charging Trump with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The judge in that case, Aileen Cannon, held that special counsel Jack Smith, whose team brought the case, was unlawfully appointed and that his office was improperly funded.
The federal court filing in Washington offers competing visions for how the case should proceed and comes before a status conference set for the coming week — the first court appearance in the case in months.
The Supreme Court opinion made it all but certain that no trial can be held before the election, and it now falls to US District JudgeTanya Chutkan to determine which of the acts in the indictment can be included in the case and which must be stripped out.
The timetable