Trump’s Demands of Judge Chutkan Were Just a ‘Hail Mary’: Legal Analysts

Former President Donald Trump’s request to force Special Counsel Jack Smith to hand over more discovery was a “Hail Mary” attempt to delay and frustrate proceedings in the election interference case, a legal expert has said.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr, a former attorney turned legal analyst, discussed Trump’s lawyers’ recent demand that federal prosecutors hand over further evidence to them which Smith’s team will use in the 2020 election obstruction case.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan largely rejected the request on October 16, saying much of what they were seeking was irrelevant to the case on the events that led up to the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol. This includes information relating to security at the Capitol prior to the riot, and information regarding alleged “undercover agents and individuals acting at the direction of official authorities” at the Capitol that day.
Speaking on the #SistersInLaw podcast, hosted by former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks, Stohr said Trump’s legal team was trying to delay the case going to trial, rather than actually seek all the discovery they requested.
“It was a Hail Mary that had no catcher on the other side, like it was just an effort to delay and or distort and it failed,” Stohr said.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance also told the podcast that Trump was in his rights to ask Smith to hand over discovery to help his legal defense, but that he purposely asked for more than he needed to.
“There’s this huge universe of evidence that the government turns over to criminal defendants routinely in every case,” Vance said. “But of course, Trump, being Trump, he wanted to go on some grand fishing expedition for information that just wasn’t relevant.”
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s legal team for comment via email.
Trump has long been accused of using delay tactics to push back the start of his 2020 election obstruction case, where he has pleaded not guilty to four charges.
It’s unclear if the election interference case will ever go to trial due to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in July that presidents are entitled to at least some immunity from prosecution for officials acts carried out in office.
If the federal case is not thrown out, any trial is all but guaranteed not to take place before the end of the year. If Trump wins November’s election, he could order the Department of Justice to drop the federal investigation once he enters office in January 2025.
Chutkan did order Smith’s team to search and hand over materials that a former director of National Intelligence reviewed before he was interviewed by prosecutors, and records on Trump’s meeting with former acting defense secretary Chris Miller and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, days before the January 6 attack.
Chutkan directed Smith’s team to search and provide to the former president’s lawyers any Department of Justice information related to a separate investigation into former Vice President Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents.
Pence, whose relationship with Trump fell apart in the wake of the Capitol riot, was not charged by the DOJ after sensitive materials were found in his Indiana home in January 2023.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the potential criminal charges faced by Pence “gave him an incentive to curry favor with authorities” by providing information in the January 6 case.
“Defendant is correct that information suggesting a potential witness’s motives for implicating him may be material,” Chutkan wrote.