The same day prosecutors filed a motion opposing former President Donald Trump’s request for a month’s delay in deadlines in his classified documents case, they served his attorneys 750 pages of material, some of it classified, which defense attorneys said they had been requesting for months.
Prosecutors argued that the month delay was part of President Trump’s effort to postpone deadlines, and ultimately the trial, “indefinitely.”
Defense attorneys have not hidden the fact that they would prefer not to litigate this case into the election season with their client as the presumptive Republican nominee, and have stated their intention to file motions to dismiss the case, but they argued in a Feb. 14 court filing that all of the delays in the case thus far have been due to the prosecutors’ actions.
As early as June 2023, special counsel Jack Smith’s office said it had moved “swiftly” to provide President Trump all the unclassified discovery material in the case. In July, it argued that “from day one, we’ve had all the discovery and been able to produce it and to have the case ready from our perspective to go to trial.”
They pointed to the fact that the special counsel had not set up a secure facility in the Southern District of Florida so that defendants could review classified discovery until months into the case, something the judge had also noted, and that the prosecutors continue to serve unclassified discovery they purported to have on Day One. They claim the prosecutors have gone to “great lengths” to delay their access to materials.
Delays
Defense attorneys argued that it was when “details regarding the Office’s non-compliance started to emerge” that the pretrial deadlines were reset the first time.Both parties had met with the judge recently in multiple sealed hearings, discussing matters related to classified information.
The defense attorneys revealed that part of it is related to the ongoing issue of discovery.
“This week’s hearings demonstrated that the pending discovery disputes present significant obstacles to an efficient and orderly adjudication of the Defendants’ pretrial defenses, including but not limited to complex legal and factual disputes relating to what is only the ‘initial’ CIPA § 4 motion by the Special Counsel’s Office,” the response reads.
From early on in the case, defense attorneys have argued in multiple court filings that they are not receiving all the evidence they are entitled to from the prosecution, that there are significant delays in getting the material, and that more time is needed to review the million-plus pages they do have. Prosecutors, meanwhile, have argued that some of the information is not in their possession, not what the defense is entitled to, and that they have done what they can to make the material easily accessible to the defense.
Now defense attorneys are arguing that the next steps in defense strategy may be subject to change depending on certain evidence they are trying to obtain through these classified motions.
They point out that the judge had previously said that “one would have to review the relevant classified discovery in order to formulate a meaningful response,” and this situation is the same.
In January, defendants met the deadline to file motions to compel, but are still litigating the issue and have not received that evidence yet.
The parties have an upcoming Feb. 22 deadline to file evidentiary motions, which they now say would be based “on an incomplete record,” requiring them to later supplement it.
The ongoing litigation for incremental batches of classified discovery is why the pretrial deadlines had already been pushed back once.
The defense attorneys point to these batches of discovery as purposeful, given that the prosecutors have been saying they are ready to go to trial. They claim they often receive documents months after a request was made.
“The Office suppressed the discovery for as long as possible, and then collected and turned it over at the last minute in order to avoid having to defend the indefensible in briefing on the motions to compel,” the response reads.
They also accuse prosecutors of only producing those batches after they are threatened with litigation.
“The suggestion that the Office was within their rights to withhold discoverable materials until confronted with such a demand is troubling,” attorneys added.
The defense has requested an extension of the Feb. 22 deadline to 30 days after the court has resolved their current dispute to obtain classified information.
