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Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on Friday warned of "danger dead ahead" after the latest legal motion from Donald Trump, calling it a preview of his "dictatorial plans."
The former president is currently in the midst of four criminal cases across various jurisdictions, adding up to a total of 91 criminal charges. Among the cases, the most prominent is considered to be the federal case brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith, accusing Trump of attempting to carry out a scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump, the GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges in the case, with his legal team recently filing a motion seeking to have the case thrown out altogether, claiming he has complete immunity from the charges due to the fact he was president at the time. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, rejected the motion on Thursday, explaining that the former president does not have the "divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens."
Now, Trump and his legal team have filed an appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to overturn Chutkan's decision. In the filing, Trump's attorneys claimed that this appeal request has put a "mandatory and automatic" pause on all other matters involved in the case, and further made the assertion that Trump will act as if the pause has been granted, even though Chutkan has not yet ruled to grant one, "absent further order of the Court."
The assertion has been met with widespread criticism in the legal world and even outright mockery in some corners. For his part, Kirschner, a staunch Trump critic and legal analyst, stressed the unprecedented nature of the move and how dangerous it could be moving forward, in the latest video posted to his YouTube page.
"Friends, in my 30 years as a prosecutor, I never once had a defendant or a defense attorney say, 'Judge, Judge, I don't care how you might rule on this motion, I'm telling you, I've made a decision...I don't need you to rule,'" Kirschner said. "The only thing I can think of to call that is a defendant in criminal litigation trying to act as a dictator, or perhaps as a second judge who gets to override the judge who's assigned to oversee the case."
He later added: "This is dangerous. Danger dead ahead. This is Donald Trump testing the waters, you know, sort of trying to test out his ability to ignore Judge Chutkan's rulings, to ignore the courts altogether. Because the courts are the greatest danger to Donald Trump's power.
In a Saturday statement to Newsweek, Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach, Florida, and legal expert, suggested that this move from Trump was likely to fail, unless it helps him delay the start of the trial, currently set for March 2024.
"Trump has every right to appeal Judge Chutkan's ruling denying him immunity from prosecution—which he will lose—but he is also taking the unusual step of asking for a stay, or pause, of the entire election interference case pending his appeal," Aronberg explained. "The law is not on Trump's side on the immunity issue or his request for a stay, but Trump could win by losing if this leads to delays in this trial."
He continued: "The election interference trial in DC is the most likely of all of Trump's four criminal cases to go to trial before the 2024 election. That's because Jack Smith built his case for speed by limiting the indictment to only four counts and excluding unindicted co-defendants from the case. Plus, Judge Chutkan is no-nonsense and seems determined to move this case along quickly. The trial is set to begin on March 4, 2024, and I believe it will occur on or near that date—unless the appellate courts do the unexpected and give in to Trump's obvious delay tactics."
Updated 12/9/23, 11:59 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comments from Aronberg.
About the writer
Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more