Jack still putting Trump between a rock and a hard place

Jack keeps filing motions even with the case on hold while Trump's ridiculous appeal on grounds of presidential immunity goes through the courts.  And Trump doesn't like it.

On Wednesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the court to put the kibosh on Donald Trump’s efforts to “turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation.”

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[T]he special counsel has filed a motion to block Trump from bombarding the jurors with irrelevant and prejudicial evidence. And because Smith takes no prisoners, he’s done it in the most aggressive way possible.

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“Through public statements, filings, and argument in hearings before the Court, the defense has attempted to inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial,” Special Counsel Smith argued in a pretrial motion filed Wednesday. “Although the Court can recognize these efforts for what they are and disregard them, the jury — if subjected to them — may not.”

Prosecutors accuse Trump of attempting to engage in jury nullification, that is, securing an acquittal by convincing jurors to disregard the evidence and law in favor of their own personal feelings of justice. They argue that “the defendant should be precluded from raising irrelevant political issues” which might “improperly suggest to the jury that it should base its verdict on something other than the evidence at trial.”

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[Trump's lawyers claim] the stay of deadlines in the election case makes it “illegal” for the prosecution to do anything at all. Since Judge Chutkan accepted his demand to put the case on ice while Trump makes his preposterous claims of presidential immunity to the DC Circuit, the government has continued to produce discovery and file their own motions.

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No doubt Team Trump will be back with another round of yelling about “illegal” filings before long. But the prosecutors’ motion imposes no obligation on Trump to respond, so it seems unlikely that Judge Chutkan will reprimand the government for filing it, much less remove it from the record. That leaves Trump in an uncomfortable position. Having insisted that he cannot be burdened with litigation while he appeals the immunity issue, he can either leave this motion, which undercuts every aspect of his defense, unrebutted, or he can answer it with an “illegal” filing of his own that advances the stayed litigation.

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The motion is yet another bold move by a prosecutor who hasn’t taken his foot off the accelerator since he was appointed on November 18, 2022, two days after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy. If Trump were an introspective man, he might consider where he’d be if he hadn’t been so intent on beating his hapless primary rivals to the punch that he forced the ever-cautious Attorney General Merrick Garland to hand the investigations off to a wildly aggressive prosecutor to avoid a conflict of interest.

Would there be any realistic possibility that these cases might go to trial before the election if Trump had just held off a few more weeks on announcing?

Probably not. But of course Trump is not a man given to introspection, so instead he simply throws ketchup at the online wall.

  Public Notice

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.