Special counsel Jack Smith makes a statement to reporters about the 37 federal charges returned by a grand jury in an indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump on charges of unauthorized retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice as Smith speaks at his offices in Washington, U.S. June 9, 2023.
Leah Millis | Reuters
A judge on Friday paused proceedings in the criminal election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump, a move that reflects the expected end of the prosecution.
The pause was requested by special counsel Jack Smith, whose team is prosecuting Trump in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Smith earlier Friday told Judge Tanya Chutkan that vacating the schedule of remaining pretrial motion deadlines would give his team “time to assess this unprecedented circumstance” of Trump’s electoral victory “and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”
Trump’s win against Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week was considered a death knell for Smith’s prosecutions of him.
“By December 2, 2024, the Government will file a status report or otherwise inform the Court of the result of its deliberations,” Smith wrote in a filing Friday.
Trump is charged in the case with crimes related to his efforts to undo his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, when the Republican was the incumbent president.
Trump has said he plans to fire Smith, and is expected to force the DOJ to end the prosecutions.
And DOJ policy effectively bars the department from prosecuting a president while in office.
Trump also had been charged by Smith in federal court in Florida with crimes related to retaining classified government records after leaving the White House in early 2021, and with obstructing efforts by officials to recover those documents.
The case was dismissed in July by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, who said that Smith’s appointment as special counsel by the DOJ violated the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Smith has appealed that dismissal to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
But that appeal, like the criminal election case in Washington, is considered doomed by Trump’s electoral victory.
Trump is also charged in Georgia state court in Atlanta with racketeering and other crimes related to his attempt to reverse Biden’s White House win in 2020. But Trump is not expected to stand trial in that case while serving as president.
The president-elect also is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26 in New York state court in Manhattan for nearly three dozen criminal counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump faces potential prison sentence in that case, but would not be expected to serve any such sentence while he is president.
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