Special counsel Jack Smith expressed frustration with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, claiming she is giving weight to former President Trump’s “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that the confidential documents found in his Florida home were his personal property.
Tuesday night’s move coincides with Cannon’s request for both sides to propose jury instructions that take into account Trump’s interpretation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which specifies the handling and storage of records created during a president’s term.
The law does allow for some information to be considered personal property of the president, but legal experts have rejected Trump’s claim that the more than 300 highly classified records retrieved from his house are in any way personal.
Smith’s side claimed that believing Trump’s notion “would distort the trial.”
“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, and the PRA should play no role in the jury instructions,” the lawyers said.
“In fact, based on the current record, the PRA should play no role at trial at all.”
“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,'” the prosecutor said.
The Espionage Act, which prohibits the deliberate retention of national defense secrets, is the primary legal basis for Trump’s trial. They also charge him with obstruction of justice for his attempt to conceal the data when officials sought their return.
Legal experts were perplexed by Cannon’s recent orders, which asked both sides to assess two scenarios that broadly supported Trump’s understanding of the PRA but failed to consider his prior petition to dismiss the lawsuit on those grounds.
The hesitation on that topic, along with countless other motions, has resulted in a backlog of matters in the case, including Cannon’s request for a new trial date.
“We need to swiftly resolve this purely legal issue.” “If the Court deferred a decision on that fundamental legal point, it would cause significant delay in the trial,” prosecutors argued, citing Cannon’s requirement to rule on the underlying PRA motion before proceeding to jury instructions on the issue.
It’s unusual for prosecutors to be so direct in opposing a judge’s orders, but several sentences in the brief indicated frustration with the slow pace of the proceedings.
At another point in the filing, Smith stated that it was “vitally important” that Cannon “promptly decide” the matter, emphasizing their potential to file an appeal of erroneous jury instructions later.
Smith’s team also spent a lot of time refuting Trump’s claims that the records could be his personal property, pointing out that he has yet to offer any proof to support that claim, despite mounting a legal defense based on it.
“The Court should be aware at the outset that Trump’s entire effort to rely on the PRA is not based on any facts. It is a post hoc justification that was concocted more than a year after he left the White House, and his invocation in this Court of the PRA is not grounded in any decision he actually made during his presidency to designate as personal any of the records charged,” prosecutors wrote.
“Importantly, Trump has never represented to this Court that he in fact designated the classified documents as personal. He made no such claim in his motion to dismiss, in his reply, or at the hearing on March 14, 2024, despite every opportunity and every incentive to do so. As discussed below, the reason is simple: he never did so. Instead, he has attempted to fashion out of whole cloth a legal presumption that would operate untethered to any facts.”
