If prosecutors have their way, former President Donald Trump may soon lose his favorite line of attack against the Justice Department's election interference case against him.

On Wednesday, Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a motion asking US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who's overseeing the criminal case, to block Trump from injecting politics into the proceedings.

Trump should only be able to introduce arguments and evidence based on facts and the allegations against him, not distract the jury by turning the courtroom "into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation," the filing argues.

"He cannot raise wholly irrelevant topics in an effort to confuse and distract the jury," the prosecutors wrote.

With a Washington, DC-based grand jury, Smith alleged that Trump conspired to obstruct Congress and broke multiple laws in his attempts to stop the certification of the results of the 2020 election, which he lost.

Trump has denied the charges and, in court filings and social media tirades, claimed the prosecution amounts to another "witch hunt" partisan attack. The case, he argues without evidence, was cooked up by a team selected by President Joe Biden as Trump runs again in the 2024 presidential election.

The May 2024 trial date currently hangs in the balance as an appeals court reviews whether Trump has "absolute immunity" from criminal prosecution for actions he took as president, as Trump's lawyers have argued. The issue is almost certain to go to the Supreme Court. But that hasn't stopped Smith from trying to move the case forward in Chutkan's courtroom by trying to limit the scope of what Trump will be allowed to argue in the trial.

In the filing, prosecutors pointed to Trump's posts on Truth Social and other public statements making "unsupported and politicized claims of selective and vindictive prosecution" and complaining that the criminal indictment interferes with his presidential campaign. They asked Chutkan to keep such rhetoric out of court.

"None of these issues goes to the defendant's guilt or innocence," prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors argued that such extraneous information would confuse and distract jurors or may create sympathy among them that could lead them not to convict Trump even if the facts at trial proved he was guilty. Since it's a criminal case, Trump would need just one holdout to be acquitted at trial.

Earlier this year, Trump made great efforts to politicize the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case against him and his company. In frequent speeches outside the courtroom — and even during his own witness testimony — he complained that the case was brought as a partisan and politically motivated attack.

Trump's frequent tangents and shifts to attacking prosecutors during his testimony frustrated the judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who often rested his head in his hands and glared as Trump talked about his book sales and the Democratic party's supposed "weaponization" of cases against him.

"I beseech you to control him," Engoron begged Trump's lawyers during his testimony.

In the criminal election interference case, prosecutors have also argued that Trump shouldn't be able to blame law enforcement for failing to stop the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot in order to argue for his innocence.

"A bank robber cannot defend himself by blaming the bank's security guard for failing to stop him. A fraud defendant cannot claim to the jury that his victims should have known better than to fall for his scheme," prosecutors wrote. "And the defendant cannot argue that law enforcement should have prevented the violence he caused and obstruction he intended."