Judge hits pause on Trump’s election interference criminal case

WASHINGTON — The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal election interference case has granted a request from special counsel Jack Smith to hit pause on the process and give him a month to formally request how to move forward — likely the first step in ending the prosecution.

In a filing on Friday, Smith said that “as a result of the election” the prosecution “respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance.”

“By December 2, 2024, the Government will file a status report or otherwise inform the Court of the result of its deliberations,” the filing said, adding that Trump’s attorneys do not object to the request.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted the motion shortly after it appeared on the court docket. “All remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule are VACATED. By December 2, 2024, the Government shall file a status report indicating its proposed course for this case going forward,” the judge wrote. 

The Justice Department has a longstanding policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. The DOJ had begun assessing how to end the cases against Trump after he won the election, sources told NBC News this week.

Trump was indicted in the case in August 2023, but significant delays have kept it from going to trial. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Trump was charged in connection with the effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat and accused of fraud and trying to disenfranchise American voters. Separately, he was charged with mishandling classified documents in a Florida case that was ultimately dismissed over objections to Smith’s status as a special prosecutor.

Smith’s office had been appealing that dismissal but that appeal is now expected to be dropped as DOJ officials see no room to pursue either criminal case and no point in continuing to litigate them in the remaining weeks before he takes office, sources told NBC News Wednesday.

The department’s position stems from a 2000 memo by its own Office of Legal Counsel, which affirmed a Watergate-era conclusion that a prosecution of a sitting president would “unduly interfere in a direct or formal sense with the conduct of the presidency.”

Trump also faced state criminal charges in New York and Georgia. He’s tentatively scheduled to be sentenced in the New York case on Nov. 26 after he was convicted earlier this year on 34 counts of falsifying business records, a low-level felony.

The judge in the case, Juan Merchan, must first decide on Trump’s request to have the charges thrown out in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year expanding presidential immunity protections. Merchan is expected to rule on the issue next week.

The Georgia election interference case has been on hold as Trump and some of his co-defendants are asking an appeals court to remove the prosecutor in the case because of conflict of interest allegations. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the Georgia case as well.

No trial date has been set in that case and legal experts have said constitutional issues will likely require any Georgia trial or New York retrial to be put on hold until Trump is done with his term in 2029.

His return to office likely won’t prevent the massive penalties stemming from civil cases against him, including one from New York Attorney General Letitia James and two from writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump also denied any wrongdoing in the civil cases.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.