Judge won’t toss docs case on records law
Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected former President Trump’s effort to dismiss the classified documents case against him based on his reading of the Presidential Records Act, but only for now.
The controversial federal judge wrote in a brief three-page ruling that the indictment against Trump for mishandling classified documents may stand for the time being.
“The Presidential Records Act does not provide a pretrial basis to dismiss,” Cannon wrote.
But Cannon rejected as “unjust and unprecedented” the demand by special counsel Jack Smith that she rule out giving a jury the option of deciding whether Trump had the right to take hundreds of classified documents when he left the White House.
She shot down the pointed filing made by Smith that demanded she rule now on Trump’s plans to claim the Presidential Records Act could effectively supersede the Espionage Act, which bars mishandling of classified documents.
“Soliciting preliminary draft instructions on certain counts should not be misconstrued as declaring a final definition on any defense,” Cannon wrote. “Nor should it be interpreted as anything other than what it was: a genuine attempt … to better understand the parties’ competing positions.”
Smith wrote in a filing Monday that refusing to rule comprehensively before the trial could allow Cannon to dismiss the case during the trial, which would prevent prosecutors from appealing the ruling due to double jeopardy.
He threatened to ask an appeals court to overrule her or perhaps even oust her from the explosive case.
Legal analysts appeared split on whether Smith might still seek to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene.
Cannon snippily reminded the bulldog prosecutor that the state “remains free to avail itself of whatever appellate options it sees fit to invoke.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take any documents he wanted when he left office in January 2021.
Prosecutors and virtually all legal analysts say the Espionage Act prohibits anyone, including Trump, from mishandling classified documents.
Trump is accused in the documents case of taking hundreds of sensitive national security documents to Mar-a-Lago and defying efforts to get them back.