Lawyers for former President Donald Trump, vowing multiple legal challenges to his prosecution for the violent January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his attempt to stay in office after being defeated, asked a federal judge late Friday night to set a schedule that would keep the case going at least through January 2025.

If Trump were to win the presidency in the election to be held about nine weeks from now, on November 5, the January 6 case might never go to trial.  As President, he would be in charge of the Justice Department, and could act to end his own prosecution.

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith on Friday night proposed a far more streamlined schedule for the case, but left the actual timing of the next steps up to the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan.

The judge will hold a meeting with both sides next Thursday morning, and may react at that time to the starkly different approaches the two sides suggested.  It was entirely expected that the two sides would be far apart on how they wanted the case to proceed; they have engaged in rigorous legal combat ever since Trump was first charged 13 months ago.

Trump’s lawyers told the judge Friday that they will be filing a series of motions to dismiss the case in its entirety, arguing that Smith’s legal team has mishandled the case throughout and that the Supreme Court has now strongly lined up in support of legal immunity for the former President.  They have vowed to mount a nearly government-wide search of official documents in search of ways to benefit his legal defense against the charges.

All of that legal maneuvering, Trump’s attorneys contended, would have to be completed before any actual trial before a jury could begin.  (Normal deadlines requiring a “speedy” trial in federal criminal cases have long since been suspended in this case.)

Judge Chutkan has already decided that the first issue she will decide is how far any legal immunity for Trump will extend.  Last December, she had rejected an earlier plea by Trump to dismiss the case based on an immunity claim, but that was months before the Supreme Court’s July 1 constitutional ruling erected an expansive legal shield against criminal prosecution of former and current Presidents.

The two sides disagreed on a basic scheduling point: the prosecutors asked the judge to schedule simultaneous filing of written legal briefs on the immunity issue and on Trump’s other planned challenges, but Trump’s team urged the judge to take these issues one at a time, in sequence, over a period extending to early 2025.  (Both sides signed the joint status report filed Friday, but they were in agreement on very little.)

The immunity issue has changed fundamentally in the case because prosecutors, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, obtained an entirely new, and shorter indictment earlier this week.  The new charging document cut out large parts of the earlier indictment, to eliminate evidence that would be shielded by immunity.

Prosecutors suggested that the immunity issue should focus on “categories” of evidence cited in the indictment, rather than poring over  evidence piece by piece to determine if it is protected by immunity.  Their plan would be to file an opening brief that defends the new indictment against immunity claims, and that also would suggest evidence outside the indictment that might be put before the jury, giving Trump’s lawyers the right to then file their own brief arguing their points on immunity.

Trump’s lawyers proposed a very different approach: while his team will challenge much of the evidence behind the indictment, they want the judge to put the initial focus on their several requests to dismiss the case outright.  Ending the case based on those broad challenges, his lawyers said, might make it less necessary to focus on specific evidence in the case.

Here are the requests for dismissing the case that Trump’s team said they will be filing:

• Ending the case outright because the Supreme Court’s immunity decision shields “official” actions that Trump took while serving as President, and the new indictment is filled with evidence that qualifies as part of official duty.
• Ending it because Jack Smith’s appointment to investigate the January 6 incident was unconstitutional and beyond the authority of Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Smith is illegally using federal funds to finance the case.
• Ending it because the new indictment still contains evidence that would require the jury to examine the official relationship between Trump as President and Mike Spence as Vice President during the incidents growing out of the 2020 election.
• Ending it because the grand jury that issued the new indictment this week was exposed to evidence that is protected by presidential immunity.
• Ending it because the charge of obstructing the congressional proceedings on January 6, 2021, is based upon a misreading – declared by the Supreme Court in another ruling this year – of such a criminal charge.

In addition to those challenges, the Trump team said it will be pursuing a wide-ranging probe throughout many federal government agencies in search of evidence that might support Trump’s legal defense to the charge.  Those attorneys contended that Smith has continuously resisted the scope of such a probe for evidence favorable to Trump.