Special counsel Jack Smith and Washington, D.C., Judge Tanya Chutkan are taking former President Donald Trump's constitutional right to a speedy trial as the government's own in an "extraordinary" push against the president's chief political rival, legal expert Jonathan Turley warned in an op-ed.
"At every juncture, Smith has tried to expedite and spur the case along," Turley wrote in a Sunday op-ed. "This has included an attempt to cut off standard appellate options for Trump. It seems as if the entire point is to try Trump before the election."
Forget the Justice Department policy of not proceeding within 60 days of an election, the Biden DOJ is "shoehorning" the case into that very window before November, according to Turley.
"With the Supreme Court reviewing the immunity question (and a decision not expected until June), a nightmare scenario is unfolding in which Trump could be tried not just before the general election, but actually through November's election," he wrote.
"Chutkan has insisted that her refusal to consider Trump's candidacy is simply denying special treatment to the former president. But there is nothing typical about how she and others have handled the case. The fact that Chutkan was pushing for a March trial date shows just how extraordinary her handling has been."
Here are the highly unusual circumstances of the government's push for an election trial, according to Turley:
- This is a "rocket docket for a complex case of this kind," as a backlog of cases in the D.C. courts tend to take over two years — and that is without the extraordinary and "serious complications over classified or privileged material."
- Smith is moving to "to cut off standard appellate options for Trump," because it is apparently "the entire point is to try Trump before the election."
- Smith has admitted the push for urgency is because he wants voters to consider the outcome of the trial: "It is a rare acknowledgment of a desire for a trial to become a factor in an election."
- Chutkan has a Trump animus, openly stated in court with past Jan. 6 defendants, where she said Trump should be criminally charged before Smith even brought charges, claims she denies when asked about recusal.
- Chutkan is telling her other cases waiting on the docket she is going to be out of country in August unless "I'm in trial in another matter that has not yet returned to my calendar."
- Smith said in the Florida classified documents case he will not abide by the Justice Department policy of avoiding proceedings 60 days in advance of an election: "He insisted that, since everyone knows about the allegations, there would be no harm or foul in holding him for trial for the weeks before the election as his opponent, President Biden, is free to traverse the country campaigning."
Former special counsel Robert Mueller aide Andrew Weissmann calls the 60-day policy "an internal rule; it is not a law," claiming Democrats' attacks on Trump are already public so they are good to go during the vote.
"That rule is intended so that the Justice Department does not take action in a covert case that is suddenly overt shortly before an election," Weissmann told MSNBC. "Why? Because you don't want to influence the election when that person — the candidate — doesn't have an opportunity to get to trial."
But Turley exposed Weissmann as a hypocrite, citing his 2020 writings about special counsel John Durham's investigation of the Russia investigators.
He was "adamant that such prosecutions would be dangerous," Turley wrote. "Even though no actual election candidate would have been charged, they invoked this Justice Department 'norm' and declared, 'The Justice Department should not take action that could distort an election and influence the electorate.
"'If someone is charged immediately before an election, for instance, that person has no time to offer a defense to counter the charges. The closer the election, the greater the risk that the department is impermissibly acting based on political considerations, which is always prohibited.'"
The prosecutions of Trump are equally urgent before the election as they are selective because of who he is — ignoring the historic nature that is he not only a former president but also potentially the sitting president's chief rival, Turley wrote.
"The Trump trials are troubling precisely because they are being handled differently because of who the defendant is," he continued. "No one can seriously suggest that Judge Chutkan would be moving other cases or canceling trips in order to shoehorn them into the calendar this year, if it were not for the election and the name of the defendant. Such cases are, after all, notorious for taking years to work out complicated pre-trial matters."
He concluded" "As the calendar continues to shrink, claims of blind justice increasingly look like the blind pursuit of a specific person."