Docket Deep Dive: Delay, Delay, Delay

In the past couple of weeks, Donald Trump’s attorneys in the January 6 federal case have filed not one, not two, but four motions to dismiss his case on dubious legal grounds.

It’s highly likely that he’s aware that each of these will fail but is instead using the filings as an attempt to bog down the docket and tie the court up in drawn out battles to slow the wheels of justice. Some of the filings seem designed to speak beyond the person overseeing the case, Judge Tonya Chutkhan, and instead to the Supreme Court.

The first of these, filed on October 5, claims that Trump has “presidential immunity” from prosecution because the actions described in the indictment fall within the “outer perimeter” of his presidential duties.

In a flurry of filings on October 23, Trump’s team filed a further three motion to dismiss, one “on constitutional grounds” (in which he claims that he was “simply…speaking his mind and petitioning for a redress of grievances” when he tried to overthrow the election), another “on statutory grounds” (where it’s claimed that “Trump did not violate the charged statutes”) and the final one for “selective and vindictive prosecution” (arguing that “there are no other prosecutions in American history relating to these types of activities”, perhaps because no one else has so egregiously disregarded the Constitution to install themselves as a quasi-dictator).

He has also filed a motion to stay the proceedings until “the issues raised in the motion to dismiss…based on presidential immunity…are fully resolved.”

This isn’t a new tactic for Trump. It is, in fact, what the New York Times’ resident Trump-watcher, Maggie Haberman, calls his “time-tested legal strategy”. As Haberman noted after he was first indicted in the New York hush money case, “he has long used delay tactics in legal matters that emerged from business disputes, and since becoming a politician he has repeatedly tried to throw sand in the gears of the legal system, using the resulting slow pace of litigation to run out the clock until seismic events shifted the playing field.”

In this case, the “seismic event” he’s waiting for is his re-election in November 2024.

In an interesting twist, rather than spinning the gears in various courthouses and judge’s chambers, Trump’s desperation to delay his ever-growing litany of court cases may now be tying him up in knots. Last week, his lawyers in the Florida case for mishandling national security information argued before Judge Aileen Cannon that key deadlines needed to be extended because the March start date for his case in the District of Columbia meant that it was impossible to simultaneously move forward in the Florida case. Judge Cannon seemed receptive to this argument, stating “I’m just having a hard time seeing how realistically this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time, given the realities that we’re facing.”

In a court filing on Thursday, the Special Counsel’s office argued that Trump’s team was being disingenuous and trying to deceive the court, after filing a motion to stay the DC case – on the same day as the hearing in front of Judge Cannon - which wasn’t mentioned when they asked for a pause in the Florida case. The Special Counsel pointed out that the defendant had an “overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost” and was playing both courts off against one another. It remains to be seen how Judge Cannon will rule on the matter.