On Thursday, Donald Trump and special counsel Jack Smith will have the chance to debate in court Trump’s most-cited legal argument in the classified documents case against him: whether as president, he was allowed to keep any documents he wanted.
Trump’s legal team have argued in several court filings that charges against the former president should be dismissed because, they claim, Trump had unfettered authority as president to decide what documents from his time in the White House he could keep as his personal records.
Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case, has set apart an entire day to hear arguments on whether the prosecution should be thrown out on the basis of Trump’s claims about his presidential classification powers.
The hearing comes at a major inflection in the case. In the coming days and weeks, Cannon could rule on several big issues, including setting a new trial date – and whether it comes before the November election – as well as if Trump will get an evidentiary hearing over additional discovery he wants in the case from President Joe Biden’s White House, the FBI and beyond.
Trump is facing dozens of charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, and for obstructing the Justice Department’s investigation. He has pleaded not guilty.
The question of presidential authority on classified documents is one of several that Trump’s team has raised in their motions to dismiss the case against him.
As president, defense attorneys argue, Trump was the chief classification officer and could mark any documents as “personal” and legally take those documents with him when he left office.
Their arguments cite the Presidential Records Act, the federal law that governs how documents from an outgoing…
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