The filing is Smith’s latest bid to prevail on U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to adopt his proposed schedule, which would result in a trial opening in mid-December, a year sooner than Trump has called for.

Smith’s team rejected the notion that issues raised by Trump are particularly complex or unprecedented, citing cases related to former President Richard Nixon and cases that have upheld the power of special counsels to conduct federal investigations. And Trump’s contention that the Presidential Records Act — a federal recordkeeping law with no criminal component — provides him a defense in this case is “borderline frivolous,” Harbach wrote.

“The Defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal of the indictment, and the Government will respond promptly,” he said. “But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it ‘novel’ and then claim the court will require an indefinite continuance in order to resolve it.”

The prosecutors seemed to dance around the issue of Trump’s reelection bid and the complications it is certain to cause for any trial in the coming year or more.

“The conditions that Defendants argue will make it a challenge to select a jury will not appreciably change after the completion of the election,” the special counsel’s team asserted.

The prosecution also appeared to dismiss the idea that Cannon should show any deference to the involvement of Trump and his close aide and co-defendant, Walt Nauta, in a campaign for the nation’s most important office.

“The demands of Defendants’ professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay trial in this case,” Harbach wrote. “Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel. The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance, and the Court should not indulge it here.”

The filing also provided a new glimpse into the volume of evidence prosecutors obtained, describing 4,500 pages of “key” documents that they have flagged for Trump’s attorneys out of a larger 800,000-page batch of unclassified evidence. About a third of those 800,000 pages — a figure Trump cited as a basis to delay the trial — are content-free email headers and footers, the special counsel team indicated.

In addition, prosecutors have turned over the vast majority of unclassified information to Trump’s legal team, including all witness statements given to prosecutors through May 12, 2023. More recent witness statements will be turned over in the next week, the Justice Department team said.

“The government has made these productions promptly despite having no obligation to do so,” Harbach wrote, citing Cannon’s trial procedures.

Most of the 340 classified documents relevant to the case will be provided to defense attorneys as soon as they receive interim clearances, he added, a process prosecutors have said can happen quickly. The remaining few would be shared after a 45 to 60 day clearance process, they noted in a recent filing.

All documents and witness statements containing classified information for which defense counsel have been cleared will be delivered to a federal courthouse in Miami “early next week,” Harbach indicated. That courthouse is equipped with a secure facility for cleared lawyers to review classified material.

Prosecutors also indicated they produced all search warrants and relevant material from devices it obtained with a few exceptions: three devices “produced voluntarily” whose relevant contents will be shared next week and two devices obtained from Nauta.

While federal magistrate judges handled the initial arraignments in the case, the first hearing before Cannon, a Trump appointee, is set to take place on Tuesday in Fort Pierce, Fla. The announced subject for the hearing is the process and schedule for handling classified information in the case. It’s unclear whether any or all of that session will be open to the press or public.