Judge appears skeptical of Trump’s bid to dismiss case
A federal judge appeared reluctant Thursday to dismiss the classified documents prosecution of Donald Trump after his lawyers argued for hours that the case trampled on the former president’s rights.
As Trump looked on in the courtroom, his attorneys pressed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to throw out the case, arguing he was legally entitled to keep the sensitive records he is charged with illegally retaining after he left the White House.
Trump’s lawyers say the Presidential Records Act gave him the authority to designate as personal property the records he took with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Prosecutors say those included top-secret information and documents related to nuclear programs and the military capabilities of the U.S. and foreign adversaries.
Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, didn’t immediately rule, but made it clear through her questions that she was skeptical of the defence effort to scuttle one of four criminal cases against the 2024 presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Cannon suggested she seemed inclined to have the disputed issues be decided by a jury.
A prosecutor told Cannon that there are “all sorts of reasons” that Trump’s argument is wrong. Prosecutors said the files Trump is charged with possessing are presidential records, not personal ones, and that the statute does not apply to classified and top-secret documents, like those kept at Mar-a-Lago.
“The documents charged in the indictment are not personal records. They are not,” said David Harbach, a member of special counsel Jack Smith’s team. “They are nowhere close to it under the definition of the Presidential Records Act.”
Trump sat at the defence table at the federal court in Fort Pierce with his hands clasped, listening intently to the arguments.
Smith, who brought the case, was also in the courtroom, but there was no visible interaction between the two men.
The hearing is the second this month in the case in Florida.