Judges deny Trump’s bid to have two cases tossed

WASHINGTON — Former US president Donald Trump suffered a pair of legal setbacks on Thursday, as judges spurned his calls to dismiss criminal charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 loss in Georgia and his keeping of classified records after leaving office.

Separately, one of the Republican presidential candidate’s allies, former Justice Department official attorney Jeffrey Clark, faced the risk of disbarment after a Washington panel found he violated some attorney ethics rules in his attempts to enlist the agency to help overturn Trump’s loss.

Those cases represent just some of the legal entanglements facing Trump, who has been criminally charged in four cases as he challenges President Joe Biden in the Nov 5 election, with the first-ever trial of a sitting of former US president due to get underway in New York on April 15.

“It just shows that everything’s moving forward,” said Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor in Georgia, who noted that progress in many of the cases remains slow.

Florida-based US District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected on Thursday Trump’s argument that the case accusing him of illegally holding onto classified documents should be thrown out on the basis of his argument they were his personal records rather than government property.

Personal or sensitive?

Trump had argued that his retention of highly sensitive documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office in 2021 was authorized under a US law that lets former presidents keep personal records unrelated to their official responsibilities.

Prosecutors in the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith said the documents relate to US military and intelligence matters and could not be construed as personal.

In an earlier setback on Thursday, a Georgia judge rejected Trump’s bid to dismiss criminal charges in the state’s 2020 election interference case against him, which Trump argued violate his free speech rights.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found that the indictment alleges statements by Trump and 14 others charged in the case were made “in furtherance of criminal activity” and are not protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Trump, who has called all four criminal indictments against him politically motivated, still has several pending challenges to the documents case, including arguments that he has presidential immunity from prosecution and that he was selectively targeted by prosecutors.