The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office told a federal judge that the latest maneuver by President Trump’s legal team is an attempt to delay the case until the statute of limitations runs out, thereby shielding Trump from prosecution, the Washington Post reports.
The tactic has been used by Trump legal teams in the past, particularly in civil suits, where Trump’s lawyers filed appeals and motions to bury plaintiffs in paperwork so they either exhaust their resources or tire of the legal wranglings.
“Every day that goes by is another day [Trump] effectively achieves the ‘temporary absolute immunity’ that was rejected by this Court, the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court,” Carey Dunne, general counsel in Cyrus Vance Jr.’s Manhattan District Attorney’s office, said.
Trump’s legal team, led by Jay Sekulow, essentially responded with a “Nuh-uh” and a “Who? Us?” reaction in denying that they are impeding the case.
The US Supreme Court rejected Trump’s lawyers’ argument that the President has absolute immunity from any outside investigation, ordering the turnover of Trump financial records to a grand jury investigation.
SCOTUS, however, did not block all objections available to Trump’s legal team, saying they could bring up objections that were available to any US citizen. Trump’s team then filed a motion to reject the subpoena based on the allegation that it was overly-broad.
Victor Marrero, the federal judge handling the case, has previously rejected Trump’s legal arguments, and Manhattan prosecutors argue that this motion is simply another baseless motion that is based on factual and legal fallacies.