Trump's legal team files motion to hold special prosecutor Jack Smith in contempt for 2020 election case

On Thursday, former President Donald Trump’s legal team filed a motion to hold special prosecutor Jack Smith in contempt for allegedly violating a stay order in the 2020 election investigation.

According to Trump’s defense, Smith and his team continued their probe even after Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered a pause in the case’s proceedings while the former president’s lawyers appealed and argued that presidential immunity protects him from prosecution.

Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, claimed that the stay order was “clear, straightforward, and unambiguous” and accused prosecutors of violating it almost immediately.

In the first five days of the stay, Lauro detailed that Smith’s team turned over thousands of pages of additional discovery, along with a purported draft list of exhibits. Through his attorney, Trump rejected these illegal submissions, warning that they violated the suspension order, and threatened to seek redress if the malicious conduct continued.

The former president’s lawyer also criticized Smith’s filing of a motion that “teems with partisan rhetoric” and that he said defames Trump by claiming the former president “propagates irrelevant disinformation.”

“[The motion] mirrors the Biden Administration’s dishonest talking points, asserting, again falsely, that Trump was responsible for the events of January 6, 2021, when in truth he called for peaceful and patriotic assembly and protest,” Lauro said.

Jack Smith: “crooked Joe Biden’s henchman”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung described Jack Smith as “crooked Joe Biden’s henchman” and accused him of unilaterally disobeying the stay order to pursue “harassment litigation.”

Cheung stated that the motion filed seeks to hold Smith accountable for contempt of court, stressing that “no prosecutor is above the law.”