Former US President Donald Trump arrived at a federal court in Florida on Thursday for a criminal case that accuses him accuses him of illegally holding onto classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
Trump’s lawyers will ask the federal judge to dismiss the case during the hearing.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to a 40-count indictment that accused him of retaining classified national security documents at his Palm Beach mansion after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing US government efforts to retrieve the documents.
If US District Judge Aileen Cannon — who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020 — sides with the former president’s lawyers, it would be a rare instance of a case being thrown out before even reaching jury.
What will Trump’s lawyers argue?
The legal team representing Trump is expected to tell the judge that he was authorized to keep the documents because he designated them as “personal” under Presidential Records Act.
But special counsel Jack Smith’s team says that the documents are presidential records, not personal files, and that the Presidential Records Act does not apply classified and top-secret documents.
The Presidential Records Act “does not exempt Trump from the criminal law, entitle him to unilaterally declare highly classified presidential records to be personal records, or shield him from criminal investigations — let alone allow him to obstruct a federal investigation with impunity,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing last week.
Trump’s lawyers are also expected to argue that the central charge against trump — that he illegally retained information related to US national defense — is improperly vague as it applies to a former president.
Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, faces three other criminal cases ahead of the US election in November.
zc/wmr (AP, Reuters)
