A federal judge Friday granted Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for a pause as prosecutors discuss how to wind down Trump’s Jan. 6 election interference case after his election win.
District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan gave until early December to decide future steps in the case, which cannot proceed with Trump heading back to the White House.
“The government (needs) time to assess the unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy,” Smith said in a one-paragraph filing that asked her to waive some procedural deadlines in the case.
He said Trump’s defense lawyers do not object to the request and Chutkan quickly granted it.
Department of Justice policy bars prosecution of sitting presidents, effectively dooming the Jan. 6 case as Trump prepares to return to the White House upon his inauguration set for Jan. 20.
Smith may simply drop the case. Some legal analysts have suggested that he may issue a report laying out some of his findings about Trump’s scheme to overturn his election loss in 2020 and stay in power, an effort that culminated in the attack on the Capitol by a mob of his extremist supporters.
Trump has vowed to fire Smith and scrap all the investigations of him when he returns to office.
The case was moving forward for the time being before Trump beat Kamala Harris to win a second four-year term.
Before the election, Smith had argued that Trump could be tried for allegedly engineering the effort to stay in power even after the Supreme Court granted Trump significant immunity for crimes committed while in office.
Prosecutors claimed that Trump was acting as a private candidate for office, not as president, when he committed the alleged crimes. It now seems unlikely that question will ever be decided conclusively by any legal entity.
The filing does not directly affect the other federal prosecution of Trump, who was charged with taking hundreds of classified documents with him when he left office in 2021, defying the government’s efforts to get them back and obstructing its probe.
The classified documents case is also doomed because of Trump’s return to power.
But the case was already dismissed by District Court Judge Aileen Cannon on a legal technicality, putting it in a different legal status than the election interference case.
Smith and DOJ officials are likely deciding whether to drop their appeal of that decision immediately or take some other legal steps in the weeks before Trump returns to office.
Trump faces two other state criminal cases, including a looming sentencing date on in the New York hush money case, in which a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 felony counts.
Judge Juan Merchan could sentence Trump regardless of his return to power, but the incoming president could not be imprisoned while serving as president.
On the face of it, Trump also still faces a potential future trial on racketeering charges related to election interference in Georgia.
It’s unclear if that appeal will go ahead but courts are considered likely to toss the case or delay it until after Trump leaves office.