Attorneys for former president Donald Trump on Wednesday told a federal judge that the presence of highly classified records at the ex-president’s Palm Beach, Florida social club and residence “should have never been cause for alarm” because such records should be expected to be found among presidential records.
The ex-president’s lawyers’ assertion, which flies in the face of every regulation and law concerning the care and handling of national defence information, came in a court filing made in response to the Department of Justice’s arguments against the appointment of a third-party special master to review the hundreds of documents seized from Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property during an 8 August search.
Throughout the 19-page document, the Trump legal team repeatedly argues that the search of his home was somehow an attempt to enforce the Presidential Records Act — a law which has no criminal enforcement mechanism — rather than the numerous criminal laws cited by the Department of Justice when applying for a warrant to search Mr Trump’s home and office.
His lawyers said the “discovery” of classified records in a group of 15 boxes Mr Trump turned over to the National Archives in January should not have been enough to initiate a criminal investigation because of “the very nature of presidential records” even though possession of such materials outside specific facilities under the control of the government has long been a serious federal crime.
“Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm,” they wrote, adding that Archives personnel should simply have “followed up” with Mr Trump to secure any records that remained at Mar-a-Lago even though any presidential records are government property that should have been turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration when he left office on 20 January 2021.
The Trump team also argues that prosecutors have misinterpreted the Presidential Records Act in a way that says Mr Trump was required to turn records over to the Archives at the end of his presidency. Instead, they say the law merely “exhorts a former President to interface with the Archivist to ensure the preservation of Presidential records” and “does not oblige the former President to take any particular steps with respect to those records” even though the law clearly states that records created in the White House are owned by the government of the United States and are not the property of any former president.
Legal experts contacted by The Independent had universally dim views of the Trump attorneys’ arguments.
Nick Akerman, a former federal prosecutor who served on the Watergate special prosecution team in the 1970s, said in a text message that the filing was “Total bulls***, as [former Attorney General] Barr would say”.
Another prominent national security law expert, attorney Bradley Moss, told The Independent that the filing was “terrible”.
“If [Judge Aileen] Cannon agrees to this crap, it will be amazing,” he said. He also noted on his Twitter account that the Trump team’s latest work was, in his estimation, “garbage,” “gibberish,” and “all over the place”.
Former Wachtell, Lipton attorney and prominent Trump critic George Conway also weighed in via text message, telling The Independent that he skimmed the brief while waiting for a television appearance and “saw nothing coherent” therein.
