Donald Trump’s lawyers claimed in a series of filings to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday that he cannot be prosecuted in the Florida classified documents case because of presidential immunity.
Trump’s attorneys filed at least a half dozen motions seeking to dismiss the 40-count indictment charging Trump with mishandling classified materials and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, according to The Washington Post.
Trump’s team also filed motions seeking to dismiss the case based on alleged prosecutorial misconduct and selective and vindictive prosecution, according to the report.
Similar arguments from his lawyers have already been rejected in the D.C. election subversion case. An appeals court panel unanimously ruled earlier this month that Trump does not have immunity in that case. The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the matter, which could settle the question in both cases.
Trump’s immunity claim on Thursday was related to 32 counts in the indictment accusing him of illegally retaining national security information. The other eight counts are related to alleged obstruction that took place after he left office.
“Specifically, President Trump is immune from prosecution on Counts 1 through 32 because the charges turn on his alleged decision to designate records as personal under the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’) and to cause the records to be moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago,” the immunity filing says. “The alleged decision was an official act, and as such is subject to presidential immunity.”
Another motion claimed that special counsel Jack Smith was not properly appointed because he was not confirmed by the Senate. Another filing claimed Trump cannot be charged with retaining documents containing nuclear secrets because he remained on a classified clearance list for months after leaving office, a claim Smith’s team has refuted.
Two of the filings argue that the Presidential Records Act allows Trump to designate presidential documents as personal, another claim refuted by the Justice Department.
“The PRA conferred unreviewable discretion on President Trump to designate the records at issue as personal,” one filing says. “As such, President Trump’s possession of those records was not ‘unauthorized’ as alleged in Counts 1 through 32.”
Legal experts poured cold water on the Trump team’s arguments.
“The arguments are no more meritorious than the ones the court of appeals in DC already rejected,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.
“If this were allowed, POTUS could declassify all of our most sensitive secrets when leaving office & sell them to Putin 5 minutes later,” wrote CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen.
“This motion is insultingly stupid,” argued national security attorney Bradley Moss, noting that Trump cannot introduce new facts in a motion to dismiss as he did with his claim that he designated the classified documents he took as personal records.
“What a joke,” he wrote. “You can’t introduce facts, and that alone is fatal to this motion. Trump is stuck with the facts of the indictment, no matter how much this motion pretends otherwise.”
Trump’s argument makes no sense even if he did reclassify the documents, Moss said.
“Why would that then put them beyond the reach of the Espionage Act and national defense information? How does the PRA insulate Trump from that statutory provision? Your guess is as good as mine since his motion never addresses it” he wrote. “This motion is such a let down. I was expecting a lengthy diatribe about the PRA’s history but this is nothing more than Tom Fitton’s legal fantasy. Cannon will reject this easily.”
Moss wrote that he was “utterly let down by Trump’s motions.”
“I thought they actually had concocted a legitimate set of legal theories,” he said. “I see no reason to believe any of these will go anywhere.”
