Prosecutors are criticizing Trump’s bid to have the federal election case dismissed

Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to dismiss a barrage of motions filed last month by former President Donald J. Trump seeking to dismiss the indictment accusing him of conspiring to influence the 2020 election to undo. .”

In a 79-page filing, prosecutors from the special counsel Jack Smith’s office went through one by one Mr. Trump’s various requests to dismiss the case, accusing him and his lawyers of essentially trying to script of the four cases to turn around. -the charges filed against him in August.

“Defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment to claim that it charges him with entirely harmless and perhaps even admirable conduct, sharing his views on election fraud and pursuing election integrity,” wrote James I. Pearce, one of the plaintiffs, “when he wrote in The Fact that it clearly describes the suspect’s fraudulent use of knowingly false statements as a weapon in furtherance of his criminal plans.”

When Trump first filed his motions to dismiss the case, they represented a breathtaking attempt to reframe the various steps he took to cling to power after losing the election as something other than crimes.

For example, Trump tried to portray his repeated attempts to use false claims that the election was stolen as “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. Likewise, he tried to reframe his lies about the election into “opinions” that he tried to use to build support for his extensive efforts to overturn the results of the race.

But Mr. Pearce fired back for the Justice Department on Monday, saying the First Amendment does not protect “criminal conduct” such as using lies in a plot to defeat the will of the voters. He also wrote that Mr. Trump’s attempts to recast the meaning of the special counsel’s indictment to his own advantage were “based on an inaccurate and self-serving characterization of the allegations.”

In a separate motion, Thomas P. Windom, another prosecutor in the case, rejected Trump’s arguments that the charges should be dismissed because they are part of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.”

As part of their flurry of filings over the past month, Trump’s lawyers sought to portray the election interference case as “a retaliatory response” by President Biden to go after Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination .

The attorneys made these accusations even though the indictment was filed by Mr. Smith, an independent special prosecutor, and after an extensive grand jury investigation.

Mr. Windom responded to the claims by noting that they were “false” and “fabricated from two newspaper articles quoting anonymous sources.” He appeared to want to shore up his support and also angrily defended his colleagues on Mr Smith’s team.

“The Special Counsel and the career prosecutors in the Office of the Special Counsel have collectively served the Department of Justice for decades,” Mr. Windom wrote. “They took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and they faithfully carried out their prosecutorial duties in this case.”

As part of his claims of selective prosecution, Mr Trump had argued that while he was not the first candidate in US history to create alternative electors to the Electoral College in an attempt to win an election, he was the only one to criminally prosecuted for doing this.

Mr. Windom acknowledged that there had indeed been sparing use of alternate slates, dating back to the time of Thomas Jefferson. But he asserted that “none of the historical examples referenced by the defendant involved deceptive and corrupt efforts” to “block the certification of the legitimate results of presidential elections.”

In yet a third filing, prosecutors rejected Trump’s attempt to remove from the indictment any mention of the violence that erupted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. As part of their dismissal requests, his lawyers had Judge Tanya S. Chutkan remove all references to the attack on the Capitol from the case, as none of the charges explicitly accuse Mr. Trump of inciting the mob of his supporters who stormed the building stormed.

But at the government’s behest, Molly Gaston, a prosecutor in Mr. Smith’s office, alleged that Mr. Trump was “responsible for the events at the Capitol on January 6” despite the absence of a sedition charge and that there was evidence of the attack was. instrumental to the government’s cause.

“That day marked the culmination of the defendant’s criminal plots to overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election,” Ms. Gaston wrote.

The series of filings on Monday marked the second time Mr. Smith’s office has rebutted Mr. Trump’s efforts to have the election case dismissed before it goes to trial. Last month, they attacked his initial motion to dismiss, rejecting sweeping claims that he has “absolute immunity” from prosecution because the charges arose from actions he took while in the White House.

Last week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to suspend the case entirely while she considers the immunity claims — another example of the former president’s longstanding efforts to delay the proceedings as long as possible.

On Monday, Ms. Gaston asked Judge Chutkan to deny the request to pause the case.

“The defendant has a proven track record of attempting to disrupt and delay the carefully considered trial date and pretrial proceedings of the court,” she wrote. “Now the defendant has timed his request to stay these proceedings for maximum disruptive effect.”