Former President Donald Trump is asking the judge presiding over his criminal case in Washington, D.C., to pause all proceedings until she rules on whether he has presidential immunity from prosecution.
Defense lawyers in the election subversion case issued a seven-page filing Wednesday evening that reignited their Nov. 1 request for United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan to pause the case until her eventual ruling on the immunity question. Trump's lawyers also took shots at special counsel Jack Smith's Nov. 6 response to their motion.
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"Police officers, corrections officers, federal agents, executive officials, state prosecutors, federal prosecutors, state judges, federal judges, and Members of Congress — all of these officials routinely obtain stays of discovery and of other pre-trial proceedings when they assert official immunity, pending a final resolution of those asserted claims of immunity," Trump attorney John Lauro wrote in the filing.
Moreover, Lauro said Smith "contends that President Trump should be the only official in America who is not entitled to such consideration." He urged Chutkan to reject the prosecutor's arguments and stay all proceedings "until there is a final resolution of President Trump’s claim of Presidential immunity."
The basis of Lauro's filing is that Trump should have the same legal privileges as other defendants who hold official roles, such as police or judges, while Chutkan weighs whether official immunity applies to the former president.
Trump contends he is immune from the prosecution in D.C. because he was president at the time of the conduct described in the indictment, which charged him with four counts related to an alleged conspiracy to overthrow President Joe Biden's victory. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Smith has urged Chutkan to move quickly on rejecting Trump's immunity claims, saying in a Nov. 6 filing that those claims could be subject to “interlocutory appeal,” meaning they could be appealed ahead of the March 4 trial, which is set to be the first of Trump's four criminal trials.
In addition to his immunity claims, Trump's lawyers argued this week that his second impeachment acquittal in early 2021 should trigger double jeopardy protection because the impeachment trial focused on the same events surrounding the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that make up the heart of Smith's indictment.
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"The defendant’s motion to stay provides no basis to support his claim that the court, before even rendering a decision on the defendant’s immunity motion, should suddenly halt all work in this case simply because the defendant says that he is immune," Smith's team wrote in his filing last week. "That is because there is none."
There is no set deadline for Chutkan to issue a decision on the motion.