Keeping up with Donald Trump’s court schedule is a dizzying task, since he faces two federal trials, a criminal trial in Georgia, and two separate civil and criminal trials in New York. (Oh, and he’s running for president.) To make it easier to follow along, each Monday we’ll be looking back on all the Trump trial–related developments you might have missed the previous week. (Programming note: We’ll be skipping next week and back to our regular schedule on Jan. 22)

Happy New Year! While some of us may be going into 2024 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Trump’s legal team seems to have spent the first week of the new year hunkered down with court filings. His attorneys filed a motion seeking to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt of court, while the Supreme Court agreed to decide on whether states can remove Trump from 2024 Republican primary ballots and set an expedited briefing schedule.

Trump Wants Jack Smith Held in Contempt

Lawyers for the former president filed a scathing motion railing against special counsel Jack Smith for continuing to send them discovery materials while the federal election interference case is on pause. “Prosecutors seek to weaponize the Stay to spread political propaganda, knowing that President Trump would not fully respond because the Court relieved him of the burdens of litigation during the Stay,” wrote Trump’s attorneys.

In December, Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to stay Smith’s election interference case—legalese for pausing something—while Trump pursues an appeal of Chutkan’s decision to reject his motion to dismiss the entire case on the grounds that he’s protected by presidential immunity. However, she stipulated that proceedings were “held in abeyance,” which means something is only temporarily suspended until another matter is resolved, and that if the case returns to her jurisdiction, she’ll determine what to do about the previous schedule—including the March 4 trial date.

Chutkan’s stay does not explicitly say prosecutors cannot continue to meet pretrial deadlines, including filing motions or sharing discovery materials. So shortly after the Christmas holiday, Smith filed a motion requesting Trump be banned from “injecting politics” into his trial, in order to meet the currently on hold deadlines and bolster the possibility that the trial will return to the old schedule, if it returns to Chutkan’s courtroom. Last Thursday, Trump’s lawyers said that Smith’s team had also been sending them “thousands of pages of additional discovery,” including hundreds of video and audio recordings. They argued that these actions impose “additional burdens of litigation,” and therefore Smith and his team of prosecutors should be held in contempt of court.

Trump’s attorneys also want Smith to withdraw the motions he’s filed since the stay was imposed, and ask that he be forced to seek permission before filing any future motions or providing more discovery and to pay for incurred attorneys’ fees and expenses.

The special counsel hit back in a Friday night memo, arguing that he told all the parties involved in this case, through a public filing issued days before Chutkan officially issued her stay, that his team would continue to move forward and meet all the existing pretrial deadlines. Smith also noted that none of the material sent to Trump’s attorneys “requires any action by the defendant, and he fails to explain how the mere receipt of discovery materials that he is not obligated to review, or the early filing of the Government pleadings to which he does not yet need to respond, possibly burdens him.”

An Appeals Court Will Hear Trump’s Presidential Immunity Claim

This week, a three-judge panel in D.C. will kick off oral arguments for Trump’s appeal of his federal election interference indictment. The central question at play: Can a former president be shielded from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office?

Chutkan believed the answer was no. Trump’s immunity claim first went through her, and she affirmed last month that just because Trump was president at the time, “that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.” The former president promptly appealed Chutkan’s decision, and now it’s up to the appeals court to decide whether the special counsel’s entire election interference indictment should be dismissed. If the appeals court does not rule in Trump’s favor, his attorneys have signaled they’re ready to take this all the way up to the Supreme Court. (The highest court declined to consider the matter on an expedited basis, after Jack Smith asked them to bypass the appeals process last month.)

Meanwhile, on Monday, Trump filed a motion to have his Georgia election interference indictment thrown out using the same immunity reasoning. In that case, Judge Scott McAfee will decide.

The Supreme Court Will Decide if States Can Kick Trump Off 2024 Ballots

After the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump was disqualified from appearing on the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot, Trump appealed the decision to the Supreme Court—and last week the high court announced it would take the case on. At the heart of the issue is the interpretation of Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment, which stipulates that anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution and engaged in insurrection cannot hold public office.

The Colorado Supreme Court found that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, disqualified him under Section 3, and shortly thereafter so did Maine’s secretary of state. It’s the first time states are deciding on the eligibility of a national candidate, and more could be coming—Illinois, Oregon, and New York are among 34 states challenging Trump’s 2024 candidacy.

To try and nip this trend in the bud, Trump’s lawyers quickly appealed the Colorado ruling up to the Supreme Court, arguing that Section 3 of the 14^thAmendment is “misapplied” here because Trump took a different oath of office for the presidency than the offices listed under the amendment, thus falling out of its scope. And, as expected, Trump’s lawyers also defended his role on Jan. 6, writing that he was “in no way ‘engaged’ in ‘insurrection.’ ”

Legal experts expected Trump would run to SCOTUS, since, as Lawrence Lessig recently explained in Slate, Section 3 does not explicitly mention the president, only “a Senator, or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or [to] hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state.”

The Supreme Court now has to decide what is the appropriate definition of Section 3. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern recently wrote, constitutional scholars have suggested that the presidency is an “office” subject to Section 3’s restrictions; that Trump did engage with the Jan. 6 insurrection; and that Section 3 is “self-executing.”

“The trouble for SCOTUS—and, specifically, for the conservative justices—is that this evidence creates a strong originalist justification for removing Trump from the ballot,” Lithwick and Stern write. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Feb. 8.

New York Attorney General Wants Trump to Pay Up $370 Million

Last Friday, Attorney General Letitia James requested that Trump be penalized $370 million for using fraudulent financial documents in order to secure bank loans, more favorable insurance rates, and tax benefits, according to the New York Times.

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When initially filing her lawsuit in 2022, James estimated Trump unlawfully obtained $250 million, but now that the case has gone through trial—with Trump, his children, former and current Trump Organization employees, and more expert witnesses testifying about how those financials were compiled—she recalculated how much Trump has gained through the unlawful conduct. She determined it should be $370 million, over $100 million more than what was originally requested.

On top of that financial penalty, James wants Trump permanently banned from doing any real estate deals in New York and from holding any leadership position at a New York corporation. She also wants three of Trump’s children, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, removed from their roles at the Trump Organization and barred from entering into any New York real estate acquisitions for five years.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing, chalking up James’ lawsuit to an “election interference witch hunt.” He’s also pointed to the disclaimer clause, a standard warning attached to financial documents, that he argues shields him from any liability.

Trump Loses Effort to Delay the E. Jean Carroll Defamation Trial

Trump’s appeal of writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit was rejected for a second time, and now it looks like the case will go to trial as scheduled on Jan. 16. The former president was asking for it to be dismissed on the grounds that he was protected under presidential immunity—sensing a trend here?—and this argument was rejected in mid-December by a three-judge panel because Trump failed to raise his immunity claim in 2019 when Carroll initially filed her lawsuit.

Trump decided to try again, asking for a rehearing of his appeal to delay the trial, and last Wednesday it was promptly denied, with no explanation. He could take it to the Supreme Court, if he so chooses, but there’s no guarantee the high court would agree to hear it.

This is Carroll’s second lawsuit against Trump, with the first one having taken place last year under a New York state law that waived the statute of limitations for filing sexual assault allegations, with Carroll accusing him of rape. In May last year, a jury found the former president was liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. Carroll had previously sued Trump for defamation, with the case finally set to go to trial after a lengthy delay. In 2019, shortly after she publicly accused Trump of sexually assaulting her decades prior in a department store dressing room, he said it had “never happened” and that Carroll was “not my type.” She promptly sued for defamation.

The bulk of Carroll’s second lawsuit has already been decided, as a federal judge ruled in September last year that, given the verdict of her first lawsuit, she does not need to again prove that Trump defamed her. So the January trial will strictly focus on what, if any, damages Trump owes Carroll.

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