Judge rejects Donald Trump’s request to dismiss classified documents case
A federal judge on Thursday rejected a bid by Donald Trump to dismiss a criminal case involving classified documents, casting doubt on another effort to undermine prosecutors during arguments hours before the trial.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued a two-page order saying that although the Trump team made “various arguments worthy of serious consideration,” the charges were not worthy of dismissal. The case involves boxes of records, some of which are highly classified, that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House.
Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by the former president, made clear during more than three hours of arguments that she was unwilling to dismiss one of four criminal cases against the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. She said at one point that dropping the indictment would be “hard to see” and that repealing the Espionage Act statute, which underpins most of the felonies against Trump, would be a “pretty extraordinary” step, but his lawyers argued that Unconstitutionally vague.
Cannon’s ruling is a small victory for special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which is pursuing a separate indictment against Trump, in addition to the classified documents case, accusing him of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
But it did not answer the question of when the case might go to trial and covered only one of two motions argued in court Thursday. A separate motion is still pending on whether the documents can be preserved under the Presidential Records Act after Trump leaves the White House, but the judge also appears unwilling to dismiss the case on that basis.
“It’s hard to see how that gets you to drop the prosecution,” she told one of Trump’s lawyers.
Trump attended Thursday’s debate as his lawyers urged Cannon to dismiss the case, his hands sometimes clasped in front of him at the defense table as he listened intently.
It was the second hearing this month in Florida, where the case has been moving slowly in court since prosecutors first filed charges last June. Cannon heard arguments on March 1 about when to schedule a new trial date (originally scheduled for May 20), but has not announced a specific date and did not say Thursday when it would do so. Prosecutors have urged a judge to set a date for this summer. Trump’s lawyers want it delayed until after the election.
After the hearing, Trump took to his Truth social platform to note a “large crowd” outside the courthouse, including supporters holding flags and signs who honked car horns in support of the former president.He said again The prosecution is a “witch hunt” inspired by President Joe Biden.
Some of Thursday’s debate focused on the Presidential Records Act of 1978. The law requires that presidential documents be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration, although former presidents may retain notes and documents created for purely personal reasons.
His attorneys say the bill gives him the right to designate the records he brought to Mar-a-Lago, Florida, as personal property and to do with them as he pleases.
“He has an initial right to confidentiality,” defense attorney Todd Branch said. “He has the right to do whatever he sees fit with his record.”
Prosecutors countered that the records were clearly presidential, not personal, and included top-secret information and documents related to the nuclear program and U.S. and foreign military capabilities. They say the presidential records statute was never intended to allow the president to retain confidential and top-secret documents like those kept at Mar-a-Lago.
“The documents charged in the indictment are not personal records, period. They are not,” Harbach said. “They are far from that under the definition of the Presidential Records Act.”
Trump’s lawyers have separately challenged a statute that criminalizes the unauthorized retention of defense information as too vague, a charge that constitutes 32 of the 40 felonies against Trump in the case. Base.
Defense attorney Emile Bove said the statute’s vagueness allowed the Justice Department to engage in what he called “selective” enforcement that led to Trump being charged but allowed others to avoid prosecution. Boff said a recent report by special counsel Robert Hule criticized President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information but stopped short of recommending charges that justified his view that the information was unclear.
When the law is unclear, Boff told Cannon, “The court’s obligation is to strike down the statute and say ‘Congress, get this right.'”
Jay Bratt, another prosecutor on Smith’s team, questioned whether there was anything unclear about the law, while Cannon pointedly noted that repealing a statute would be a “very extraordinary step.” .
In a subsequent ruling denying the defense’s request, she cited “definitions of statutory terms/phrases that continue to fluctuate” and “disputed factual issues” that could be decided by the jury.
Trump has been accused of deliberately keeping some of the nation’s most sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, returning only a fraction of them upon request from the National Archives. Prosecutors say he urged his attorneys to hide the records, lie to the FBI that he no longer had them and had staff delete surveillance footage that showed boxes of documents being moved around the property.
Cannon has said in the past that she believes Trump’s status as a former president separates him from others who hold classified records.
In 2022, after Trump’s team sued the Justice Department to get his records back, Cannon appointed a special agent to conduct an independent review of documents obtained during the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid. The appointment was later overturned by a federal appeals court.
On Thursday, she grappled with the unprecedented nature of the case, noting that no former president had faced criminal jeopardy for mishandling classified information.
But Blatter responded: “There has never been anything like this.”
Trump is charged in a separate federal case in Washington with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump has argued in both federal cases that presidential immunity protects him from prosecution, although Cannon has not yet agreed to hear arguments on that claim in the documents case.
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments next month on Trump’s immunity claims in an election interference case.
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