Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to avoid setting an expedited schedule as it considered the issue of whether Mr. Trump was immune from charges accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
In a 16-page filing that blended legal and political arguments, the lawyers asked a three-judge panel of the court not to move too quickly in mulling the question of immunity, saying that a “reckless rush to judgment” would “irreparably undermine public confidence in the judicial system.”
“The manifest public interest lies in the court’s careful and deliberate consideration of these momentous issues with the utmost care and diligence,” wrote D. John Sauer, a lawyer who is handling the appeal for Mr. Trump.
The former president’s brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the first time he formally weighed in on how fast his critical appeal of the immunity issue should be heard.
The filing came two days after the special counsel, Jack Smith, asked the same judges to fast-track the appeal, saying that keeping the underlying case moving forward would vindicate the public’s interest in a speedy trial.
Mr. Smith has also filed a parallel request to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to consider the immunity issue even before the appeals court does and to issue their decision quickly. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have until Dec. 20 to respond to that request.
The Supreme Court has also agreed to hear another case with a bearing on Mr. Trump’s prosecution, saying on Wednesday that it would consider whether the former president and hundreds of people who have been prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol can be charged in those cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct or impede an official proceeding.
The separate dispute over presidential immunity has the potential to invalidate the federal indictment of Mr. Trump altogether and to keep the charges from being heard by a jury in Federal District Court in Washington, as scheduled, in March.
Mr. Trump’s legal team is also using the immunity appeal to make political attacks against Mr. Smith and the Biden administration. As the lawyers had done in other court papers, they filled their filings to the appeals court with descriptions of the indictment as a partisan effort to derail Mr. Trump’s third bid for the White House.
“The prosecution has one goal in this case: to unlawfully attempt to try, convict and sentence President Trump before an election in which he is likely to defeat President Biden,” Mr. Sauer wrote. “This represents a blatant attempt to interfere with the 2024 presidential election and to disenfranchise the tens of millions of voters who support President Trump’s candidacy.”
The appellate process began two weeks ago when the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that he was “absolutely immune” to the election interference charges because they were based on actions he took while he was president. Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged her decision in front of the appeals court in Washington and also asked her to freeze the case while the appeal was being heard.
But winning the appeal was only one of Mr. Trump’s goals. All along, he and his lawyers have had an alternate strategy: to delay the trial on election interference charges for as long as possible.
If Mr. Trump is able to postpone the trial until after the election and ultimately wins the race, he will have the power to simply order the charges to be dropped. Holding a trial after the race is over would also mean that voters weighing in on whether to elect Mr. Trump again in 2024 would not have had a chance to hear any of the evidence that prosecutors collected about his expansive efforts to reverse the results of the previous election.
Mr. Smith’s team has never explicitly suggested that they are worried that if Mr. Trump is re-elected he will use his political victory as a means to quash his legal problems. Instead, they have framed their concerns about the scheduling of the case in a different way, saying they are seeking to protect the enormous public interest in seeing the case resolved in a timely fashion.
Mr. Sauer rejected that position in his filing to the appeals court, accusing Mr. Smith of using the case to damage Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
“The date of March 4, 2024, has no talismanic significance,” he wrote. “Aside from the prosecution’s unlawful partisan motives, there is no compelling reason that date must be maintained.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have long complained that the trial in Washington is itself a form of election interference.
Mr. Sauer pointed out, for instance, that March 4 is just one day before Super Tuesday, the most important date in the primary election season.
“The potential trial is likely to last for months,” he wrote, “and it will thus inevitably interfere with the ability of American voters to hear from the leading presidential candidate at the height of the campaign.”
