Accepting such an argument would be “pure fiction,” the special counsel argued.
Special counsel Jack Smith, responding on Tuesday to the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, urged her to reverse course on entertaining the idea that Trump had any personal ownership over the classified materials he has been charged with unlawfully possessing.
In a late-night filing replying to an order last month from Judge Aileen Cannon requesting proposed jury instructions that appeared to accept at face value what legal experts have argued is one of Trump’s most fringe defenses – that the former president had unchecked ability to claim all classified records as his personal property – Smith argued that accepting such an argument would not only be “pure fiction,” but “meritless and fatally undermined” by all the evidence gathered by the government as part of their case.
Among that evidence, according to Smith, are interviews with Trump’s own Presidential Records Act representatives and “numerous” high-ranking officials from the White House, none of which “had heard Trump say that he was designating records as personal,”
Brian Butler said he helped Trump aide Walt Nauta load about 10 to 15 boxes onto Trump’s plane at the West Palm Beach airport near his resort in June 2022,
Even if President Trump authorized the movement to Mar-A-Lago, in June 2022 citizen Trump did not have the authorization to have classified documents moved. Now you could argue it was just Butler and Nauta moving these documents and not Trump himself, but that still doesn’t mean Trump had need-to-know to keep these documents on site and that the documents now belong to their authorizing agency. Even if the executive branch was the authorizing agency, the Biden administration is the successor of function and owns these classified documents.
i have to say that this does not seem cut-and-dry. i’m not interested in defending any politician, and trump less than most, but i also think that laws are bad and would err on the side of ignoring or abolishing the law in about every case. given this proclivity, my lack of expertise, and the lack of clarity, i’m of the opinion that this whole endeavor is a big waste of time and energy.