Former President Donald Trump asked the district court judge overseeing his trial for his actions leading up to January 6, 2021, to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt of court, according to a filing submitted on Thursday.

Trump’s filing claims that Smith, who is prosecuting the former president in a DC federal court, is in violation of a stay order put in place by Judge Tanya Chutkan after the prosecutor submitted new pretrial filings during the ongoing stay period.

The stay order was put in place after Trump appealed a previous decision by Chutkan rejecting Trump’s assertion of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. That appeal will be heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on January 9. Smith’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The argument Trump puts forward in his filing is that Smith’s motions are filled with “partisan rhetoric” that “mirrors the Biden Administration’s dishonest talking points”. Since Trump is relieved of having to respond by the stay order, “the prosecutors seek to weaponise the Stay to spread political propaganda”.

Like many Trump-related legal motions, this filing is likely little more than a bid to buy time. Since his multiple indictments for trying to steal the 2020 election and illegally taking classified documents, Trump has engaged in a legal battle to delay his trials as much as possible, since he would become immune from prosecution, and even have the power to dismiss federal charges, if he were to win the 2024 election and take office again.

Trump faces four charges in the trial, including conspiracy to defraud the country by lying about election fraud, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding for planning to derail the counting of electoral votes on January 6, obstruction of an official proceeding for the attempt to do so, and conspiracy against rights for his efforts to threaten people’s right to vote.

It’s one of four separate legal battles the former president is facing: two related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, one regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents, and one relating to his 2016 hush money payment to a porn star.

The request that Smith be held in contempt revolves around the prosecutor’s continued filing of pretrial motions during the stay period where Trump is relieved of the “burdens of litigation”. That relief means that Trump need not respond to motions filed by the prosecution until the appeal is concluded.

The prosecution’s continued motions, Trump argues, place an ongoing burden of litigation on him, in contravention of the stay order.

The pretrial filings Trump accuses Smith of improperly submitting are known as motions in limine, which state what evidence or arguments should be held inadmissible during the trial. The court previously ordered Smith to file these motions by January 9, which is also the date Trump’s appeal is slated to be heard by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Smith’s motions aim to hold that filing deadline, which Chutkan said may still stand, depending on the appeal verdict, in her stay order.

With Trump asking the court to rule that the prosecution’s motions be withdrawn, and that they be forbidden from submitting any more filings until the stay is lifted, the contempt request can be seen as Trump’s effort to tie up Smith’s motions and further delay the trial if he loses his appeal.

WASHINGTON — For the third time in four months, Donald Trump was dragged into a courtroom on Thursday and charged with felonies that could bring him years in prison, this time for his schemes to remain in power despite having lost the 2020 election that culminated in his violent January 6, 2021, coup attempt.

The former president, technically under arrest yet again while the judge set the conditions of his release, pleaded not guilty to four counts of conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding and unlawfully depriving voters of their civil rights.

Trump stated his name, his age, told the magistrate judge that he had not take any medication that would affect his ability to understand the proceedings, and then listened to her explain that he could face a cumulative 55 years if convicted on all four counts. He then stood and pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Judge Moxila Upadhyaya then warned Trump not to speak about the case with other witnesses, before informing him that he would not be required to appear personally at his next court date, August 28. That hearing will be before the US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has earned a reputation for handing out stiff sentences to January 6 insurrections who have been convicted in her courtroom.

As he has for each of the previous indictments against him, Trump remained defiant and claimed prosecutors were only charging him to hurt his campaign. “I AM NOW GOING TO WASHINGTON, D.C., TO BE ARRESTED FOR HAVING CHALLENGED A CORRUPT, RIGGED, & STOLEN ELECTION. IT IS A GREAT HONOR, BECAUSE I AM BEING ARRESTED FOR YOU. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” he wrote on his social media platform early on Thursday afternoon.

The arraignment took place at the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue, just eight blocks from the White House, where Trump is accused of having carried out crimes with at least six as-yet-unnamed co-conspirators, but whose identities likely include advisers such as lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

The courthouse is also just four blocks from the Capitol, where a mob of Trump’s followers, incited by a rally where he continued pushing his lies that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him, assaulted police officers to enter the building in an attempt to stop the congressional ceremony to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s win.

The conspiracy to defraud and obstruction charges are based on Trump’s plan to get Republicans in seven states Biden won to submit fake slates of electors to the National Archives and the US Senate, with the goal of using these forged certifications to coerce then-Vice President Mike Pence into awarding Trump a second term. The civil rights charge is based on the argument that Trump disenfranchised millions of voters in those states by attempting to have their votes nullified.

The new indictment, unsealed on Tuesday, follows another federal indictment in June that charged Trump with illegally retaining secret documents at this Florida country club and then trying to hide them from authorities seeking their return. He was also indicted in New York City in April for falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment to a porn star in the days leading up to the 2016 election.

A fourth indictment against Trump is possible in Georgia, where the Atlanta-area district attorney is presenting evidence to a grand jury that Trump attempted to coerce state officials into overturning his loss to Biden in that state.

Trump would, if convicted in the cases to date, face decades in prison. But if he succeeds in regaining the White House in next year’s election, he would have the authority to end the federal prosecutions against him entirely and would likely be able to persuade state courts to suspend criminal cases against him for the duration of his presidency.

Despite all the criminal cases against Trump, though, his Republican rivals, with few exceptions, have been unwilling to criticise him for his actions that led to the charges, choosing instead to attack the prosecutions as politically motivated. Possibly as a result of this, Trump dominates the GOP field in polling for the 2024 nomination, with massive leads in national surveys and double-digit leads in the early-voting states.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Follow HuffPost UK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.