Trump Wants Prosecutors Held in Contempt in Federal Election Case

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that they want the special counsel, Jack Smith, and two of his top deputies to be held in contempt of court and sanctioned for violating a judge’s order that effectively froze the criminal case accusing Mr. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

The lawyers in their request seek to force Mr. Smith and his team to explain why they should not be held in contempt and possibly pay a portion of Mr. Trump’s legal fees. The request was the latest aggressive move in what has quickly turned into a legal slugfest between the defense and prosecution, underscoring how critical the issue of timing has become in the election subversion case.

The spat began last month when Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in Federal District Court in Washington, put all of its proceedings on hold until Mr. Trump resolved his attempts to have the underlying charges dismissed with claims that he has immunity from prosecution in the case.

Those arguments will be heard on Tuesday by a federal appeals court in Washington and are likely to make their way to the Supreme Court for another level of review.

The trial in the election case is set to begin in early March. Hoping to keep it on schedule, prosecutors working for Mr. Smith have, on occasion, sought to nudge the matter forward despite Judge Chutkan’s order.

A few days after the order was imposed, for instance, they told the judge that they had sent Mr. Trump’s legal team a draft list of exhibits that they intended to use at the trial and thousands of pages of additional discovery materials. They noted that the list and the documents had been turned over “to help ensure that trial proceeds promptly if and when” the case