Attorneys for former President Donald Trump are requesting a brief extension to file pretrial motions for discovery and subpoenas in the federal case accusing him of interfering with the 2020 elections, arguing that the special counsel’s office has not been as forthcoming as it claims.
The requested extension is for a Nov. 17 deadline to file such motions, though further deadline changes to the trial may yet be requested as President Trump’s team seeks to obtain more evidence related to the 2020 elections, if the special counsel’s office is reluctant to produce them.
Before the new response was filed on Monday, the defense made sent two “extensive letters” requesting documents from the prosecution that they had not produced during discovery on Oct. 15 and Oct. 23. The prosecution sent a one-page response to the first letter and did not reply to the second while the deadline for motions loomed overhead. In turn, the defense filed a motion to extend the deadline on Nov. 1.
“The purpose of the Motion was—and is—to give the parties the opportunity to resolve as much as possible by agreement before engaging in motion practice,” the new filing reads.
“Notably, the prosecution did not respond to President Trump’s discovery demands until the same day they objected to the brief adjournment, and then had the audacity to argue that President Trump’s ’requests are designed to disrupt the trial date and delay the resolution of this matter.'”
Demand for Documents
Defense attorneys argued that the prosecutors made an “unreasonable rejection” to 24 recent requests for discovery materials while asking for “additional information in an effort to better understand some of [the defense] requests,” including “the defense’s theory of discoverability.” The same night, prosecutors filed a response to the motion in court stating that the parties have already conferred.
“That is not the truth,” the new filing reads, revealing that the defense did not have an opportunity to respond before the prosecutors made their filing.
They note that “it appears motion practice will be necessary for President Trump to receive the full extent of the discovery to which he is entitled,” but it is typical in criminal cases for both sides to communicate and reach some sort of agreement on discovery outside of motion practice.
Trump attorneys have noted in media appearances that in fighting the charges special counsel Jack Smith brought against the former president for challenging the 2020 elections, they hope to uncover some of what happened during that election that could not be investigated at the time.
“This particular indictment is going to pull the curtain back on the 2020 election, so everybody can see what happened. And it’s the first time that it’s going to be done in one courtroom,” attorney John Lauro previously told The Epoch Times.
To that end, the team has already made requests for classified documents, and missing documents from the January 6 Select Committee archive.
The prosecution has also stated that it has not produced all the documents that have been requested.
Volume
Another issue the defense team faces with discovery is the sheer volume of what has already been produced—some 13 million pages.Attorneys are arguing that they need sufficient time to review this so they can tell if there are “issues” with the production “including mission documents, incomplete metadata, and other technical problems” before the trial.
They are requesting the ability to file motions regarding these issues as they are discovered, rather than an extension in the timeline, and in the filing refuted the prosecution’s arguments that the initial motion for a 10-day extension was to create an “indeterminate, unworkable schedule” controlled by President Trump.
Characteristic of recent motions filed by the defense in this case, defense attorneys were at times colorful in their descriptions. They argued that the prosecutors have spent three years in their investigation of the former president, “expending tens of millions of dollars assembling what is, undoubtably, the largest team of attorneys and agents ever tasked with prosecuting a single person,” and the discovery dump is further evidence of the “resource imbalance.”
In general, President Trump has been seeking to delay all cases until past the general election while he campaigns across the country to run for the presidency again in 2024, and multiple times prosecutors, and sometimes judges, have rejected his candidacy as a reason to change trial schedules.
