Federal Judge Aileen Cannon refused this Thursday, March 14, to dismiss 32 charges in the criminal case in Florida against former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump for withholding confidential documents after leaving the White House.
“After careful review of the motion, the related presentations and the arguments raised during the hearing, the defendant’s (Trump’s) motion is denied,” Judge Cannon said in her ruling in a court in Fort Pierce, on the east coast of Florida, where the case is being discussed.
Cannon, who was appointed to the judge by Trump, had made clear during more than three and a half hours of arguments that she was reluctant to dismiss the criminal case against the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
Criminal charges 1 to 32 are related to “voluntary withholding of national defense information” and “conspiracy to obstruct justice.” In the 20-page motion presented on February 22, Trump asked the judge to dismiss these charges for “unconstitutional vagueness.”
The judge said it would be a “quite extraordinary” step to strike down an Espionage Act statute that underpins most of the charges against Trump.
As Trump watched in the room, his lawyers pressured Cannon to dismiss the case, arguing that he had a legal right to retain confidential files he was accused of illegally withholding after leaving the White House.
His lawyers claim that the Presidential Records Act authorized him to designate as personal property the files he took to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Prosecutors countered that those documents were clearly presidential, not personal, and included top-secret information and documents related to nuclear programs and the military capabilities of the United States and other countries.
Cannon’s ruling only concerned Espionage Act arguments.
A separate motion argued Thursday over whether Trump had a right under the Presidential Records Act to withhold the documents remains pending, but the judge also seemed disinclined to dismiss the case on those grounds as well.
The hearing was the second this month in the Florida case, which has moved slowly through the courts since prosecutors first filed charges last June. Cannon heard arguments March 1 about when he would schedule a trial date, but has not yet announced one and gave no indication Thursday about when she might do so.
Prosecutors have pressured the judge to set a date for this summer. Trump’s lawyers hope to delay it until after the election.
Trump repeats that the processes against him are a “witch hunt”
After the hearing, Trump on his Truth Social platform took note of the “large crowds” outside the courthouse, which included supporters with flags and signs honking their vehicles in solidarity with the former president.
He again called the impeachment a “witch hunt” instigated by President Joe Biden.
Some of Thursday’s arguments focused on the 1978 law known as the Presidential Records Act.
The law requires that presidential documents be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration, although former presidents can retain notes and papers created for purely personal reasons.
Trump’s lawyers maintain that under that law, he was free to do with the records as he wanted.
“He had the original classification authority,” said defense attorney Todd Blanche. «He had the authority to do what he considered appropriate with his records«.
But prosecutor David Harbach told Cannon that there are “all kinds of reasons” why that argument is wrong.
Prosecutors believe that the files Trump is accused of possessing are presidential records, not personal ones, and that the statute was never intended to allow presidents to retain classified and top-secret documents, such as those kept at Mar-a- Lake.
«Documents are not personal files, period. They are not,” Harbach said. “They are nowhere near as defined by the Presidential Records Act.”
Trump’s lawyers also challenged as overly vague a statute that makes it a crime to have unauthorized retention of national defense information, a charge that forms the basis of 32 of the 40 felony charges against Trump in the case.
Defense attorney Emil Bove said the statute’s ambiguity allows for what he called “selective” enforcement by the Justice Department, leading to Trump being indicted but allowing others to avoid prosecution.
Bove suggested that a recent report by special counsel Robert Hur, which criticized President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information, did not recommend charges, demonstrating his point about the lack of clarity.
When a law is unclear, Bove told Cannon, “the court’s obligation is to strike down the statute and say ‘Congress, get it right.'”
Jay Bratt, another prosecutor on Smith’s team, disputed that there was anything unclear about the law, and Cannon pointed out that striking down a statute would be “a pretty extraordinary step.”
Trump is accused of intentionally retaining some of the country’s most sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, and returning only a portion of them at the request of the National Archives.
Prosecutors say he urged his attorney to hide the records and lie to the FBI that he was no longer in possession of them and recruited staff to delete surveillance footage that would show boxes of documents being moved around the property.
Cannon has suggested in the past that he sees Trump’s status as a former president as distinguishing him from others who have withheld classified records.
After Trump’s team sued the Justice Department in 2022 to recover its files, Cannon appointed a special judge to conduct an independent review of documents taken during the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
That appointment was later overturned by a federal appeals court.
On Thursday, he confronted the unprecedented nature of the case, noting that no former president had ever faced criminal prosecution for mishandling classified information.
But, Bratt responded, “there has never been a situation remotely similar to this.”
Trump is separately charged in a federal case in Washington with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The former president has argued in both federal cases that presidential immunity protects him from prosecution, although Cannon has not agreed to hear arguments about that claim in the case of the documents.
The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Trump’s immunity claim in the election interference case next month.
#Judge #rejects #request #dismiss #charges #Trump #withholding #classified #documents #Diario #Página
