Trump's attorneys assert that he was entitled to keep the sensitive records with him when he left the White House and headed to Florida.
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A federal judge on Thursday rejected one bid by Donald Trump to throw out out his U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued a two-page order saying that though the Trump team had raised “various arguments warranting serious consideration,” a dismissal of charges was not merited. The case involves boxes of records, some highly classified, that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago estate when he left the White House.
But it left unanswered questions over when the case might proceed to trial and only covered one of the two motions argued in court on Thursday. A separate motion about whether Trump was permitted under the Presidential Records Act to retain the documents after he left the White House remains pending, but the judge also seemed disinclined to throw out the case on those grounds.
After the hearing, Trump on his Truth Social platform took note of the “big crowds” outside the courthouse, which included supporters with flags and signs who honked their car horns in solidarity with the ex-president. He again said the prosecution is a “witch hunt” inspired by President Joe Biden. “He had original classification authority,” said defense lawyer Todd Blanche. “He had the authority to do whatever he thought was appropriate with his records.”
Trump’s lawyers separately 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 counts against Trump in the case. Jay Bratt, another prosecutor with Smith’s team, disputed that there was anything unclear about the law, and Cannon pointedly noted that striking down a statute would be “quite an extraordinary step.”
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