For more than a year, lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump have employed aggressive tactics in defending him against two federal indictments.
But late Thursday night, the lawyers tested the boundaries of normal legal process — and perhaps the patience of the federal judge overseeing the case in which the former president stands accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
They used what was supposed to have been a procedural request for more information from prosecutors to demand that the judge strike the charges altogether — or at least remake the carefully considered schedule she set this month for pursuing next steps in the proceeding.
“This case should be dismissed,” the lawyers wrote in the first sentence of their 30-page motion to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan. “Promptly.”
While that sort of blunt assertion might not have been surprising in a filing that was actually meant to seek dismissal, Judge Chutkan had requested only that the lawyers weigh in on a procedural question. They were supposed to provide her with their arguments as to why she should force federal prosecutors led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to give them more discovery information about the charges their client is facing.
And yet, as they have done in other cases Mr. Trump is facing, the lawyers sought to repurpose the filing to their client’s own ends, employing the same type of combativeness expressed by Mr. Trump in discussing the charges against him.
