In a series of seven motions, he argued that the criminal charges against him in Florida are flawed.
Donald Trump is asking a federal judge in Florida to throw out his criminal case for hoarding classified secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate, offering a grab bag of arguments that the charges are legally faulty, that prosecutors have targeted him for political reasons and that the special counsel spearheading the case had no legal authority to bring it.
Trump’s lawyers filed seven motions late Thursday aimed at derailing the case, in which he is charged with willfully retaining classified information after he left office and obstructing a federal investigation into his possession of those secrets.
The motions include a contention that he’s immune from prosecution because he made the decision to send the highly sensitive documents to Mar-a-Lago while he was still president.
Trump also contends that he can’t be prosecuted because he was not impeached and convicted by Congress for the allegations now raised by special counsel Jack Smith. Congress, however, was unaware of his document trove for about a year after he left office.
In another motion, Trump says that under federal law he had total discretion to label the classified records as “personal,” removing them from the government’s possession and making them his own. And he argues that Smith’s appointment as special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland was improper in the first place.
All of these motions — and three others filed under seal — must be decided by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, whom Trump nominated in the closing months of his presidency. Cannon set Trump’s trial for May 20, but has since delayed many pretrial deadlines, leading to a widespread belief that she will ultimately postpone the proceedings. She is slated to hold a hearing in her Fort Pierce, Fla. courtroom next week about the trial schedule that will likely determine whether the former president will face a jury there this year.
Several arguments Trump and his co-defendants leveled Thursday remain secret for now. Cannon issued an order Tuesday instructing defense attorneys to file motions under seal if they contain any information that prosecutors or the defense consider confidential. Those arguments, which Trump provided broad outlines of in a public filing Thursday night, include claims of vindictive prosecution and an attempt to quash the search warrant that authorized the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.
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Trump moves to dismiss classified documents case https://t.co/GkWQGSyDzZ
— POLITICO (@politico) February 23, 2024
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