WASHINGTON — Special counsel Jack Smith filed a motion Wednesday in Donald Trump’s federal election interference case seeking to block him from making political arguments and referring to conspiracy theories during the trial.
“The Court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation, and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding,” the filing reads.
Smith asked the court to prohibit Trump from advancing "a theory of selective or vindictive prosecution or to otherwise improperly inject politics into the trial."
Smith pointed to Trump's arguments that he is only being prosecuted for political reasons.
"In addition to being wrong, these allegations are irrelevant to the jury’s determination of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, would be prejudicial if presented to the jury, and must be excluded," the special counsel wrote.
Additionally, Smith seeks to have the court prohibit Trump from telling the jury arguments he's made publicly that others are to blame for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, "including law enforcement, military forces, unidentified secret agents, and foreign influence."
Smith also asked the court to prohibit Trump from arguing to the jury that the reason for the Jan. 6 attack was ill-prepared law enforcement.
"The defendant cannot argue that law enforcement should have prevented the violence he caused and obstruction he intended," Smith wrote.
Trump has repeatedly argued in public that the case against him is purely political and that Smith is only prosecuting him because he is running for a second term. Trump has sought to depict the prosecution as an arm of President Joe Biden's political operation.
The former president responded to Smith's latest filing in a Truth Social post Wednesday, calling the special counsel's request "another Unconstitutional attempt to take away my First Amendment Rights, and to prevent me from saying the TRUTH — that all of these Hoaxes are nothing but a political persecution of me, the MAGA Movement, and the Republican Party by Crooked Joe and his Despicable Thugs."
In filings with the court, attorneys for Trump have echoed some of that sentiment. In the most recent filing with the appeals court over Trump's claim of immunity, his lawyers wrote, "The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our Nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic—the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system."