Trump legal election case paused as Jack Smith weighs destiny

Special counsel Jack Smith makes a statement to reporters about the 37 federal charges returned by a grand jury in an indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump on charges of unauthorized retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice as Smith speaks at his offices in Washington, U.S. June 9, 2023.

Leah Millis | Reuters

A judge on Friday paused proceedings in the criminal election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump, a move that reflects the expected end of the prosecution.

The pause was requested by special counsel Jack Smith, whose team is prosecuting Trump in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Smith earlier Friday told Judge Tanya Chutkan that vacating the schedule of remaining pretrial deadlines would give his team “time to assess this unprecedented circumstance” of Trump’s electoral victory “and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”

“By December 2, 2024, the Government will file a status report or otherwise inform the Court of the result of its deliberations,” Smith wrote in a filing Friday.

Chutkan endorsed that deadline in her order vacating the other deadlines.

Trump’s win against Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week was considered a death knell for Smith’s prosecutions of him.

On Wednesday, NBC News reported that DOJ officials have been evaluating how to wind down the election case and another criminal case against Trump before he is sworn in as president.

Trump has said he plans to fire Smith, and is expected to force the DOJ to end the prosecutions.

And DOJ policy bars the department from prosecuting a president while in office due to the department’s position in the executive branch of government. The attorney general, who leads the DOJ, is appointed by the president.

Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks to speak to the press as the 12 jurors began deliberating in his criminal hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 29, 2024. (

Doug Mills | Afp | Getty Images

Trump is charged in the case before Chutkan with crimes related to his efforts to undo his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, when the Republican was the incumbent president.

Trump also had been charged by Smith in federal court in Florida with crimes related to retaining classified government records after leaving the White House in early 2021, and with obstructing efforts by officials to recover those documents.

The case was dismissed in July by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, who said that Smith’s appointment as special counsel by the DOJ violated the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Smith has appealed that dismissal to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

But that appeal, like the criminal election case in Washington, is considered doomed by Trump’s electoral victory.

Trump is also charged in Georgia state court in Atlanta with racketeering and other crimes related to his attempt to reverse Biden’s White House win in 2020.

But Trump is not expected to stand trial in that case while serving as president, even though the DOJ has no control over that prosecution, which was filed by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.

The president-elect also is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26 in New York state court in Manhattan for nearly three dozen criminal counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump faces a potential prison sentence in that case, but would not be expected to serve any such sentence while he is president.

He is being prosecuted in the hush money case by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.