Welcome to the weekend! It was a relatively calm week when the elections are approached. I hope you all voted or have made a voting plan!
Here are the strengths of the white collar of the week:
In Halloween, Jack Smith filed his opposition to Trump’s request to file a request for rejection according to the assertion that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. It was the basis of the rejection of the Cannon judge of the pursuit of Trump in Florida. Judge Chutkan had told Trump’s lawyer that they could move the authorization to file the request, even if the deadline for the deposit of rejection has long been adopted. As we discussed last week, they submitted a request for leave to submit the combined request with the request itself, rather than waiting to see if the judge granted authorization.
In his opposition, Smith maintains that Trump has not shown no good excuse for the late deposit and that Chutkan should refuse him the right to deposit now. He notes that Trump has appropriately filed the same request in his case of Florida, which clearly shows that he was aware of the legal reasons for the request. He has deposited several other rejection requests in DC, but chose not to deposit it. It should be bound by this tactical decision.
Trump’s lawyer argued that the return of a replaced indictment should give him a new deadline to deposit rejection requests. As Smith notes, this is not convincing when the replaced accusation act has not added any accusation and the same legal theory was available from the start of the case: “Nothing in the replaced accusation act”, writes Smith, “provided a base for his motion which did not exist before”. The opinion of judge Cannon or the agreement of judge Thomas in the immunity case, which does not bind Judge Chutkan, does not provide any basis for submitting a late request for dismissal.
Smith also argues that if CHUTKAN grants Trump to leave the request, the request must be rejected. He underlines the precedent of the binding DC circuit which squarely rejects the same arguments (CHUTKAN has already noted this previous one) and the long practice of the Ministry of Justice based on the same legal provisions during the appointment of special councils.
It seems that what really happened here is that Trump’s lawyers, recognizing that the DC circuit law was downright against them, decided that it was not worth putting this motion to DC after having surprisingly won over the question before Judge Cannon and the theory received an unexpected boost from Judge Thomas, they made their mistake. Now they rush to try to get the motion on the file so that they can preserve it for the call, even if they know that they will not win before Chutkan. Judge CHUTKAN may well let them deposit, just to lean back to be fair, but it would be good in its rights to say no. If it allows them to deposit, it will certainly and quickly make the motion on the bottom.
In other news, judge Chutkan granted a defense request to extend certain deposit deadlines according to the disruption of their Florida offices and the capacity to work resulting from the recent hurricane. Trump’s response to the Smith deposit on presidential immunity is now due on November 21, Smith’s response is due on December 5, and the over-reapproduction of Trump is due on December 19.
Nbc filed a request By asking judge CHUTKAN the authorization to televise all hearing and oral arguments concerning presidential immunity, citing the extraordinary public interest in the case. He had previously filed a similar request for the authorization to televise the trial. These movements are unlikely to succeed. Although criminal procedures are televised in certain state courts, such as Georgia, federal criminal procedure rules prohibit photographing or televising criminal procedures before the Federal Court. There is no legal basis for Chutkan not to take into account this rule and to grant the request.
