Florida state attorney Dave Aronberg suggested to MSNBC on Monday that special counsel Jack Smith may be delaying former President Donald Trump's Jan. 6 case to keep his strategy hidden from the GOP nominee's defense.
"Jack Smith may not want the defense to see his cards. He may not want the defense to see the witnesses, be better prepared for the ultimate trial that'll happen if Trump is not elected," Aronberg told "Morning Joe." "And so that may be part of it."
On Aug. 8, Smith requested to delay a hearing in the case involving the government's prosecution of Trump and the 2020 election. Smith requested the delay to assess how the Supreme Court's recent presidential immunity ruling would affect the case. Judge Tanya Chutkan granted Smith's request to reschedule the Aug. 16 hearing for a date tentatively set for September.
Aronberg added that in addition to wanting to delay the case, Smith "also may want to protect his witnesses, like Mike Pence, from being harassed, from being threatened by the MAGA world. Mike Pence would have to take the stand in this mini trial. He also may want to protect Donald Trump from having a Sixth Amendment violation, where he loses the right to a fair trial because Jack Smith has tainted the jury pool. And if that happens, then an appellate court could throw the whole thing out."
"There are some people saying that Jack Smith and Merrick Garland don't want to look political. That's why they're not doing this because it's so close to the election. That's not a good reason to avoid doing this," Aronberg continued. "Because whether you do it or don't, you're going to be called political. The MAGA world's going to say you're weaponizing the Department of Justice. So go ahead and follow the evidence and the law and do it. Whether you decide to do it or not should not be based on politics. If you choose not to decide, you'll still have made a choice."
Meanwhile, amid speculation that Smith is trying not to appear political, the special counsel on Monday filed an appeal to resurrect Trump's classified document case after Judge Aileen Cannon ruled to dismiss the case on the grounds that Smith had been appointed to his special counsel role illegally, The New York Times reported.
In Smith's Monday filing, the special counsel, as well as a host of his deputies told a three-judge panel of the appeals court that Judge Cannon had erred when she ruled that no specific federal statute authorized the appointment of special counsels like Smith.
The prosecutors pointed to four current statutes that they believe give Attorney General Merrick Garland the authority to name special counsels.
"The district court's contrary view," Smith's appeal read, "conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the attorney general has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government."