Judge denies one of Trump’s motions to dismiss documents case Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, FILE
Published April 3, 2024
Accepting such an argument would be “pure fiction,” the special counsel argued.
Special counsel Jack Smith, responding on Tuesday to the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, urged her to reverse course on entertaining the idea that Trump had any personal ownership over the classified materials he has been charged with unlawfully possessing.
In a late-night filing replying to an order last month from Judge Aileen Cannon requesting proposed jury instructions that appeared to accept at face value what legal experts have argued is one of Trump’s most fringe defenses — that the former president had unchecked ability to claim all classified records as his personal property — Smith argued that accepting such an argument would not only be “pure fiction,” but “meritless and fatally undermined” by all the evidence gathered by the government as part of their case.
Among that evidence, according to Smith, are interviews with Trump’s own Presidential Records Act representatives and “numerous” high-ranking officials from the White House, none of which “had heard Trump say that he was designating records as personal,”
“To the contrary, every witness who was asked this question had never heard such a thing,” Smith’s office said.
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SOURCE: www.abcnews.go.com
RELATED: Special counsel blasts judge’s jury instruction request in Trump documents case
Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to give remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former President Donald Trump on August 1, 2023, in Washington, DC.
Published April 3, 2024
In perhaps prosecutors’ strongest rebuke yet to how Judge Aileen Cannon has handled the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith said in court filings late Tuesday evening that the judge had ordered briefings based on a “fundamentally flawed” understanding of the case that has “no basis in law or fact.”
Smith’s team harshly critiqued Cannon’s request for jury instructions that embraced Trump’s claims that he had broad authority to take classified government documents and said it would seek an appeals court review if she accepted the former president’s arguments about his record-retention powers.
In an unusual order last month, Cannon asked attorneys on the classified documents case to submit briefs on potential jury instructions defining terms of the Espionage Act, under which Trump is charged over mishandling 32 classified records. Specifically, Cannon asked the special counsel and defense attorneys to write two versions of proposed jury instructions.
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SOURCE: www.cnn.com
RELATED: Jack Smith argues “not a single” Trump official has claimed he declared any records personal
Published April 3, 2024
Washington — Special counsel Jack Smith urged a federal judge to keep a presidential recordkeeping law out of instructions that would be provided to the jury in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, according to court documents filed by Smith’s team late Tuesday. Prosecutors warned that including the law in the instructions risked jeopardizing the proceedings, and signaled they would appeal the judge’s decision if she ruled against them.
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case in Florida, asked Smith’s and Trump’s legal teams to file jury instructions based on two hypothetical scenarios: in one, the president has the authority under the Presidential Records Act (PRA) to categorize any records as personal. Under this scenario, Cannon wrote that “neither a court nor a jury” would have the ability to review the decision, a finding that could nullify much of the special counsel’s case against Trump.
In the other, the jury would be able to examine a record that had been retained by a former president and make a finding that it was either “personal or presidential,” under the PRA. Under this scenario, it is possible jurors could find that some official documents were mishandled.
Federal prosecutors rejected both proposals and wrote Tuesday that the PRA — a 1978 law that manages the maintenance of White House documents produced during each presidency — “should not play any role at trial at all,” arguing that Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified records occurred after his presidency ended.
