Jack Smith calls out Donald Trump’s strategic delay tactic in classified documents case

Rous' flamboyant Jack Smith is speaking out against a series of recent motions by Donald Trump to dismiss the

classified

documents

case

entirely. One of the former president's attempts is to claim immunity in this

case

. Miss's team says the quote is so totally without merit that it's hard to understand except as part of a

strategic

effort to

delay

Smith argues that Trump's immunity argument is even more far-fetched than the federal election interference case. , as his mishandling of

classified

material occurred after he left office. Prosecutors also dismantled the former president's argument that the hundreds of

documents

he improperly withheld were personal records they write this quote Trump did not create them they do not reflect his personal thoughts they came into his possession only through his official duties and, except for a charging document, have classification marks with which they do not resemble diaries that was in reference to the former president comparing his actions to those of President Reagan retaining his diaries after leaving office shortly after Jack Smith's team made its filings the judge overseeing the case alen cannon scheduled a hearing for next thursday that we will be watching by joining our conversation former US attorney, former deputy attorney general Harry Litman is here and former acting deputy attorney general for Homeland Security at the Department of Justice and the MSNBC legal analyst Mary McCord are here.

Rick is still with me at the table, um, Mary, let me ask you, um, what are you doing? We, Jack Smith's article, tells us most of what the non-lawyer, non-doj person knows about him, and based on Jack Smith's article and presentations, he seems to be calling bullshit on all of Jack's moves and arguments. Trump, I just think that's a fair reading. legal terms that's what you're doing, you're just using different words, different verbiage and that and that, I mean, it had to be said, I mean some of these motions, the motion to dismiss based on presidential immunity is based on a argument that Mr.

Trump, while The President designated all of these classified documents as personal and therefore that was within the scope of His official acts for which He should have immunity, so it doesn't even have to go to the question, says Jack Smith, of whether a president is a former president. He is always immune to criminal prosecution for official acts because it is ridiculous to think that what he is accused of here was part of his official acts. He is accused of withholding classified information, not classified information, National Defense information, which is the most classified information that falls under withholding that when he was not authorized to do so.

He has it after becoming president and refuses to give it back. Of course, he's also accused of obstruction of justice and things like that. So this notion that he did something relevant to this case while he was president, that's what Jack Smith

calls

nonsense. What he says is so frivolous that if this Court rejects the motion as it should, it should not stop things and allow the former president to appeal. Remember in the Jack Smith case in DC, the related case on January 6th when Judge Chuckin denied his motion. for presidential immunity, she stopped the entire case so he could appeal.

J says here because this would be so frivolous and the appeal would be so frivolous that there's no need to stop the case, so he's going to go all out for it and he does. similar arguments on the motion to dismiss based again on the presidential records acting under that law the president designated personal things and therefore cannot be accused of having personal documents and as Jack Smith says through his attorneys, I think quite persuasively these are classified documents that were prepared for your duties while you were president in the exercise of your constitutional and statutory duties they are not personal they could not be personal and the criminal statutes that apply to the mishandling of National Defense information are completely in unaffected and unrelated to a civil regime that ensures that the archist can maintain presidential records for historical purposes.

Harry, let me read you a little more of this BS presentation that's what everyone's missing around here, um, in Trump's opinion, a president. He could order the Special Forces to assassinate his main political opponent, he could accept a bribe in exchange for delivering a lucrative government contract to the bribe payer, and he could sell classified information to an adversary, as long as he was not indicted by the house and convicted. for the Senate could act with impunity, I mean, all this talk about autocracies is so close to the surface in my brain, but the job he did in pushing, forcing, pressuring and perverting the rule of law seems to be the best. the furthest he's gone and it seems like almost everything about whether we remain a nation of laws is at stake with the supreme court hearing any immunity claim from Donald Trump, that's a dead giveaway, but Smith is even taking it a step further. when you say you have arrived. he swings and takes off his gloves he's started using the dword

delay

it's so frivolous that it could only be a transparent effort to try to delay we have the move that Mary just summarized and remember I just want to put a marker there about the possibility of for her to deny the motion but authorize an interlocutory appeal and then we have all that back and forth that he has filed, well, he has filed 12 motions, as you pointed out, they have asked for hearings on 10 of them and she granted them today. for next week, here are two of them, the one that Mary just summarized and also a vague claim where she says that because maybe she had this other type of security clearance, she can't even understand what the charges are and , for both, Smith very accurately. says the whole premise of your motions doesn't really matter at all legally, even if it were correct you wouldn't be entitled to the relief you sought, even if it was correct about immunity, you took these actions afterward, words so anything else plus others judges would read them and deny them in the documents, who knows why these two caught his attention.

He now he will have a hearing. They may push for an evidentiary hearing, as always there are two simultaneous games with Trump, especially in the Margot logo. the game to win dubious rulings here are more than dubious, they are frivolous and the game to get delays and each hearing, each evidentiary hearing in particular, is just one more kick at the can in the future. I understand why Trump does this because the delay has worked, it worked every time, you know, it's kind of Houdini. Every effort to consider him a cannibal comes from this. I don't understand why any judge appointed by any president of any party allows it, it's a mockery, well, I would ask. uh uh Mary and Harry about this, they tell me because obviously since he's been on trial for anything, his only motive is to delay it properly to use the process to make sure that it's delayed so that justice is denied and I think that for the external observers. who are not lawyers, it sounds like you are using that process successfully and it seems like it is a problem with the legal system that it can be manipulated that way, particularly with frivolous claims.

I would love to know if there is some kind of legal answer to that to just dismiss it out of hand Mary, yes, so I think this lays out what I normally think: the procedures and rules are designed to ensure that people accused of crimes are given due correct process, they have enough lawyers, uh, enough. opportunity to prepare for trial have ample access to the evidence that will be used against them time to accumulate their own evidence enough time to file motions legal motions uh in the immunity case, which is very similar to kind of Double Jeopardy, the idea is you should not be forced to attend a trial at all and that is usually to protect the defendant and that is why you can file an appeal and stop the entire trial when you file an appeal, so these things are steeped in the need, uh. under our system, our constitutional system, to ensure that criminal defendants have fair trials, have due process, etc., but I think what this has exposed is that, particularly when someone like Mr.

Trump can afford the luxury or their packs can afford to pay armies of lawyers, they can really manipulate these systems, kind of like people would say some people manipulate our tax code for their benefit and to slow it down and unless you have judges that are really willing to stop it, things like speeding up the way the DC circuit sped it up. his appeal and quickly ruled - those are the only real ways to combat that and we have seen that the Supreme Court took almost two weeks to even decide whether it was going to take the immunity case and had overlooked the opportunity to have been It is possible That they took it in early December directly from the district court, bypassing the D.C.

Circuit, the Supreme Court has injected even more delay and, while they sped up a bit, they didn't speed up anywhere as fast as they sped up the 14th Section Amendment. 3 case of disqualification, so if you are going to avoid that delay you have to have judges who are willing to simply prevent it and establish schedules that guarantee fairness for the accused but also fairness for the public because there is an important public interest here