Retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz suggested that Trump special prosecutor Jack Smith is “trying to rush” the trial and trying to “provoke the judge” after the prosecutor filed court papers last week that were critical of a
Florida judge in the classified documents case. In a court filing earlier in April, Mr. Smith’s team was critical of Judge Aileen Cannon’s earlier order to provide written jury instructions based on the Presidential Records Act, saying that it doesn’t apply in this case. Later, she rejected former President Donald Trump’s attorneys’ attempt to have the case dismissed under the act, but she also rebuked Mr. Smith’s tone. But Mr. Dershowitz, a former high-profile criminal defense lawyer, said in a recent interview that Mr. Smith is “terrified” about a “fair trial in Florida” because he’s “not going to have a fair trial in
Washington D.C. [where] 95 percent of the voters hate Donald Trump, he knows there’s not going to be a fair trial in Georgia, [and] certainly not in
New York.” He was referring to the three separate criminal cases where
President Trump faces charges. The recent filings by the Smith team might be an attempt to “provoke the judge” in Florida into issuing a rushed order that prosecutors can appeal, said Mr. Dershowitz, who has been largely critical of the indictments against President Trump. “The Trump people are being accused of trying to delay the trial,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “That’s nonsense, it’s the prosecution that’s trying to rush the trial. Jack Smith said the people of the
United States are entitled to a guilty verdict before they decide who to vote for. That’s ... actually an admission of
election interference.” It came after Mr. Smith’s team filed an unusually critical document in the case, saying that witnesses interviewed by prosecutors did not “[hear] Trump say that he was designating records as personal or that, at the time he caused the transfer of boxes to Mar-a-Lago, he believed that his removal of records amounted to designating them as personal under the PRA,” referring to the Presidential Records Act. “To the contrary, every witness who was asked this question had never heard such a thing,” they added. President Trump has said on
Social Media that he had the power, as president, to declassify documents for his own personal property. Regarding arguments made under the Presidential Records Act, the former president’s team has claimed that the act allows him to designate classified materials as his own property, which they have argued renders the government’s charges against him as moot. On April 4, Judge Cannon rejected the ex-president’s arguments that the act permits him to retain the records after he left the
White House. He interpreted Judge Cannon’s ruling to say that she will wait until a jury is sworn in to provide instructions regarding whether the former president had the right to possess the classified documents under the Presidential Records Act. If that happens, he said Mr. Smith will not be able to appeal her ruling. Judge Cannon’s jury instruction regarding “how the Presidential Records Act means the jury must find
Donald Trump not guilty. And guess what, Jack? You can’t appeal it at that point. Game over,'” he said in a recent
YouTube interview. The order, he claimed, is “extremely ominous” for prosecutors in the case. Former federal prosecutor, David Weinstein, told Politico in a report published on April 5 that regarding the jury instructions to both President Trump and prosecutors: “I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I don’t want to say this is being done to intentionally delay the way that the case is moving along, but the longer this drags out, it seems that way.” The documents case was initially set for trial on May 20, but Judge Cannon heard arguments last month on a new date without immediately setting one. Both sides have said they could be ready for trial this summer, though defense lawyers have also said President Trump should not be forced to stand trial while the election is pending.