US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday declined to toss out the classified documents case against Donald Trump after hours-long arguments in part over whether the charges against the former president were too vague.
Before the judge were two of the nine motions to dismiss that the defendants have filed in the case. Cannon first heard Trump’s claim that the law prosecutors used to charge him for allegedly retaining national defense records without authorization was too vague to be used against him. Fewer than three hours after the hearing, Cannon rejected that claim.
Trump’s second motion argued that the Presidential Records Act – which governs how White House records are handled by an outgoing administration – required that the case be thrown out. Cannon hasn’t yet ruled on the second claim.
The judge, however, expressed skepticism during the hearing toward both requests for the charges to be dismissed, and she suggested that some of the issues the Trump legal team was raising would be better left to a jury to consider.
Here are key takeaways from Thursday’s hearing:
Throwing out charges because law was vague would be ‘extraordinary,’ judge says: The morning session was focused on Trump’s ultimately rejected argument that the law prohibiting the unlawful retention of national defense information was too ambiguous to be applied to his alleged conduct. Cannon said it would be an “extraordinary step” for her to throw out those charges on the basis that they were unconstitutionally vague.
Cannon: Trump’s arguments would “gut” the Presidential Records Act: The judge was similarly skeptical of the second Trump request being argued Thursday: that, because he has supposedly unlimited power to decide which documents from his White House were personal, the case against him should be dismissed. Cannon said that Trump’s lawyers were making some “forceful” arguments his ability to designate the records as personal by taking them to his Mar-a-Lago resort at the end of his presidency.
Cannon said some of Trump’s concerns should be up to the jury: The judge repeatedly said Thursday that some of Trump’s arguments are best suited for a jury to decide during his eventual trial. On multiple occasions, Cannon pushed Trump’s attorneys over whether their arguments – specifically that Trump didn’t know he was breaking the law when he took documents to Mar-a-Lago – were “premature.” Cannon said, however, that the arguments could be a “forceful” trial defense, signaling she is sympathetic to some of the former president’s complaints about the criminal case.
Read up on more takeaways from the Florida hearing.
Source: www.cnn.com