Tweet Share Share Comment This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“It would be pure fiction to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the President of the United States during his term in office were ’purely private.’ ” —Jack Smith, special counsel, in a new court filing in the classified documents case
Special counsel Jack Smith is pissed. As his classified documents case languishes in the hands of Florida’s Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, Smith filed a new motion on Wednesday that argues Cannon is pushing a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that has nothing to do with the indictment of Donald Trump.
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Cannon asked prosecutors and the defense to come up with two scenarios for a jury to consider: 1) Is Trump’s possession of a record considered personal or presidential under the Presidential Records Act? 2) Does Trump have the sole authority to categorize any record(s) as personal or presidential during his presidency?
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The exercise came in response to Trump’s attorneys’ argument that the PRA allows the former president to classify any document as personal, and during a pretrial hearing Cannon appeared open to that defense. (The PRA dictates that official records of presidents and vice presidents are officially converted from private to public when they leave office, and it gives the National Archives authority to manage those records.) However, instead of directly ruling on Trump’s application of the PRA, Cannon suggested a jury could weigh in on the question. And this week, Smith obliged Cannon’s request and submitted jury instructions, but he included a massive caveat—this indictment does not charge Trump with violating the PRA.
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“The PRA’s distinction between personal and presidential records has no bearing on whether a former President’s possession of documents containing national defense information is authorized under the Espionage Act,” wrote Smith. “And the PRA should play no role in the jury instructions.”
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Smith has charged Trump under Section 793(e) of the Espionage Act—Slate’s Fred Kaplan explains that law here—over Trump’s willful retention of classified documents. The indictment does not question whether the documents were classified or not—the FBI found hundreds of documents literally labeled “SECRET,” “TOP SECRET,” and “CONFIDENTIAL.” Yet Cannon’s jury instruction assignment suggests she’s pandering to the former president, since Trump’s attorneys have argued that Smith’s use of the Espionage Act is overly vague, and instead have argued the PRA justifies Trump taking hundreds of boxes of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago.
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Smith made clear that he disagreed with Cannon’s approach here. “The Court should be aware at the outset that Trump’s entire effort to rely on the PRA is not based on any facts,” wrote Smith. He explained that Trump didn’t claim he designated classified documents as personal until “more than a year after he left the White House,” which would mean his defense is an after-the-fact excuse made only once the investigation into the documents began and well after he left the White House. Notably, Trump’s motion to dismiss the classified documents indictment also made no mention of the PRA.
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Aileen Cannon Might Actually Get Herself Kicked Off the Trump Classified Docs Case
Read More Smith also cautioned that Cannon’s lack of decisionmaking on the PRA issue threatens the prosecution’s right to a fair trial and an opportunity to appeal.
Cannon’s judgment has been overruled before, like when a federal appeals court reversed Cannon’s order appointing a special master to investigate the thousands of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago in order to determine which ones were off-limits to the special counsel. That was an embarrassing repudiation of Cannon’s expertise, and given the way she’s handled the classified documents case since, Smith may be building a case to try to get her kicked off his trial entirely.
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Jack Smith Has Had Enough!
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04.04.2024
Tweet Share Share Comment This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“It would be pure fiction to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the President of the United States during his term in office were ’purely private.’ ” —Jack Smith, special counsel, in a new court filing in the classified documents case
Special counsel Jack Smith is pissed. As his classified documents case languishes in the hands of Florida’s Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, Smith filed a new motion on Wednesday that argues Cannon is pushing a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that has nothing to do with the indictment of Donald Trump.
Advertisement Cannon asked prosecutors and the defense to come up with two scenarios for a jury to consider: 1) Is Trump’s possession of a record considered personal or presidential under the Presidential Records Act? 2) Does Trump have the sole authority to categorize any record(s) as personal or presidential during his presidency?
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