Legal Droppings

 Trump dropped four “Motions to Dismiss” last night just before the deadline set by the trial court. “We would not have you ignorant, brothers and sisters,” so let’s start here: no, these are not “delays”. These motions will not affect the trial date one iota. Pre-trial motions like this are standard criminal (and civil) practice. Pre-trial motions this bad, are not.

Here I yield the floor to the expertise of Mr. Bradley Moss, Esq.

This motion is disturbingly poorly framed. Way too abstract an approach on constitutional grounds and does not remotely explain how the alleged criminal acts fall within 1A protection.... 

There were legitimate 1A arguments to make but I am not impressed by this motion.

That’s only one motion, but let it stand for all, as none are any better than the worst. How bad are they? There are examples you don’t need a lawyer to explain:

Trump and his allies have claimed that the Jan. 6 committee trashed any and all evidence used in their hearings. Rather, all of the exhibits, interviews and information is uploaded to a website. While there are some redactions, the Justice Department was given the full report.

This claim is just an idiotic and ignorant conspiracy theory. It’s unworthy of a legal filing as there is no evidence for Trump to produce to support it. Trump also repeats arguments in his defense which have been repeatedly rejected in J6 cases. Speaking of “no evidence”:

The legal filings' sources include "leaks from participants in the investigation." There are no citations or references in the filing or footnotes to the leaks, who they are, where the leaks were cited, where they came from, or what they said that was damaging to Trump. In fact, the word "leaks" never appears again in the court document. 

The court filing goes on to support its case by citing President Biden's political attacks and press conferences as part of the Justice Department strategy. The documents also refuse to refer to Biden as President in the text, only using the title in footnotes where the website title appears.

As emptywheel notes, Trump cites his own attacks on Hunter Biden as evidence this is a selective prosecution of Trump (and retaliation). I mention it because Trump seems to be insisting on a “I want one of those, too” method of legal pleading. Exhibit A:

This ploy is interesting, given the likelihood that Hunter Biden will file a parallel selective prosecution motion.

This is where I remind you Hunter Biden’s lawyers actually know what they are doing.

This motion doesn’t do the least amount of things it’d need to do to actually get a hearing (in part because the evidence all shows the opposite of what Trump claims). But he would have fun if he somehow did get a hearing (and if he does not but Hunter does, he’ll use Hunter’s efforts to renew the demand).

There is no nexus between Trump’s case and Biden’s. Best I can figure, Trump is suffering from lawyer envy.

Bottom line? These motions are a stinking pile; and Trump’s lawyers really suck.