Donald Trump Lawyers’ Filing Is ‘Ridiculous Exercise in Gamesmanship’: Attorney

Donald Trump’s lawyers are using “ridiculous” gamesmanship to stop special counsel Jack Smith from revealing his federal election fraud case against the former president, a former prosecutor said.
The Trump legal team has objected to Smith’s attempts to lift the word limit on his crucial filing, which will spell out the evidence he has. Trump was indicted in Washington, D.C., on four counts of allegedly working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The Republican presidential nominee has pleaded not guilty and has said the case is part of a political witch hunt.
Joyce Vance, a liberal legal commentator and former U.S. attorney, wrote in her Civil Discourse law blog on Monday that the word-count objection is completely needless.
“Trump’s lawyers, of course, have opposed the Special Counsel’s motion for more pages,” she wrote. “This is a ridiculous exercise in gamesmanship, given that if Smith sticks to the page limits and omits arguments, they would cry foul or argue that anything he didn’t squeeze into the page limits couldn’t be raised down the road.”
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump’s attorney on Monday.
Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled on Saturday that they would need to file their objection by 5 p.m. Monday. Smith will then file his brief on Thursday, regardless of the word-count ruling.
The judge and prosecutors are grappling with a July 1 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave Trump broad immunity from prosecution. Smith had to create a new indictment and get it approved by a grand jury. The document he filed on Thursday will be the opening brief in the case and is therefore a crucial document for the court to review.
Vance wrote that Smith’s court filing will be “the opening brief in the effort to determine what charges and evidence are still in play in the election interference case against Trump following the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.”
“Local rules limit the type of brief Smith is about to file to 45 pages,” Vance wrote. “Lawyers must file a request for permission before they file an ‘oversized brief.’ On Saturday, Smith filed a motion to exceed the page limit, advising the court that his brief will not exceed 180 pages, around 30 of which involve ‘extensive footnote citations’ to evidence in an appendix.”
She said that Smith is obliged to write a longer brief, as he must set out what evidence he has so that the federal courts can assess its constitutionality in light of the Supreme Court immunity ruling.
“The Supreme Court’s direction to the district court to create a detailed record of the issues here, which includes four criminal charges and the voluminous evidence the government will want to use at trial to sustain them,” she wrote.
“In fact, it would be judicial malpractice for the court to refuse to let Smith air his case for her consideration as Judge Chutkan prepares to rule on what, if any of it, escapes the broad grant of immunity ordered by the Supreme Court.”