JUST IN: Trump’s Legal Team Moves To Hold Jack Smith in Contempt

Attorneys representing former President Donald Trump in his federal case alleging election interference are petitioning the Obama-appointed judge to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt of court for disregarding a stay order pausing the trial until the president’s immunity claim can be considered by an appeals court.

On December 13th, 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a stay in the federal government’s prosecution of President Trump alleging his words and actions around J6 contributed to the violence that day. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined Smith’s request to expedite a review of the president’s claim that he is immune from prosecution, sending the issue back to the District of Columbia Circuit Court for review.

In their filing, lawyers for President Trump asked Judge Chutkan to hold Smith in contempt of court for continuing to submit thousands of pages of documents in evidence despite the stay, effectively acting as an “arm of the Biden Campaign.”

“In this manner, the prosecutors seek to weaponize the Stay to spread political propaganda, knowing that President Trump would not fully respond because the Court relieved him of the burdens of litigation during the Stay,” they wrote in a filing obtained by The Daily Caller. “Worse, the prosecutors have announced their intention to continue this partisan-driven misconduct indefinitely, effectively converting this Court’s docket into an arm of the Biden Campaign.”

In addition to the contempt charge, Trump’s legal team demanded “monetary sanctions in the amount of President Trump’s reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in responding to the prosecutors’ improper productions.”

Between December 17th and 18th, prosecutors submitted over 4,000 pages of “additional discovery” and “exhibit lists” which the president’s lawyers portray as an attempt to politically injure him ahead of the GOP presidential primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire.

New: Trump’s legal team seeks to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt for purportedly violating the court’s order staying proceedings in district court. https://t.co/ZOzysOjBvw pic.twitter.com/i4kDTet5jP

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) January 4, 2024

“Unstated, but obvious, is the prosecutors’ desperate effort to harass President Trump and prevent his likely victory in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump’s lawyers wrote Thursday.

The D.C. court is expected to hear arguments on the immunity matter on January 9th. Smith’s team is arguing that the claim by Trump is a distraction meant to delay the trial past its March 4th trial date, indicating the Biden Justice Department appointee is intent on prosecuting Trump before he could potentially win the 2024 election and seek to have the case dismissed as the 47th president.

Smith has suffered a number of setbacks in the case, including the withdrawal of key subpoenas, attempting to throw Trump in jail, attempting to hide evidence more than 1,000 miles away from the court, and spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money to go up against the former president’s formidable legal team. Some court observers believe a large chunk of his case could be dismissed.