Judge Denies One of Trump’s Efforts to Derail Documents Case
Judge Denies One of Trump’s Efforts to Derail Documents Case
With the former president in attendance, Judge Aileen Cannon held a hearing in federal court in Florida to weigh some of Donald Trump’s motions to have the classified documents case dismissed.
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents on Thursday rejected one of his motions seeking to have the case dismissed, the first time she has denied a legal attack on the indictment.
In a two-page order, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, rebuffed arguments by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the central statute in the indictment, the Espionage Act, was impermissibly vague and should be struck down entirely.
Alieen Cannon is a Trump appointee.
In a two-page order, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, rebuffed arguments by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the central statute in the indictment, the Espionage Act, was impermissibly vague and should be struck down entirely.
Just shooting for the moon right there.
Wouldn’t this more or less free anyone else charged under that same act….. like Edward Snowden?
It wouldn't free them, but it would give them the argument that the law is not enforceable.
The ruling would get challenged and quickly shot down in a higher court. There's no way that the government would allow one of their favorite hammers to use against dissidents get gutted.
No, the opposite. She said that she will not rule against the espionage act.
Ya I get that. I mean hypothetically, had they ruled in favor of trump, then people like Edward Snowden could use that ruling in their favor. I just think it would be ironic if trump was responsible for allowing Snowden to return to the US given how much he hates the guy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents on Thursday rejected one of his motions seeking to have the case dismissed, the first time she has denied a legal attack on the indictment.
The decision by Judge Cannon followed a nearly daylong hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she entertained arguments from Mr. Trump’s legal team and from prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith about the Espionage Act.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers had claimed that certain phrases in the text of the law — for instance, its requirement that prosecutors prove defendants took “unauthorized possession” of documents “relating to the national defense” — were so ambiguous and open to debate as to be unenforceable.
Judge Cannon expressed deep reservations about that claim, too, noting that while Mr. Trump was free to argue at trial that the documents he was charged with holding on to actually belonged to him, it was “difficult to see” how the argument warranted tossing the entire case out before it went to a jury.
Mr. Trump’s arguments have painted the prosecution as illegal and unfair from the outset, reflecting, as one of Mr. Smith’s deputies recently wrote, “his view that, as a former president, the nation’s laws and principles of accountability that govern every other citizen do not apply to him.”
While Judge Cannon spent much of the day peppering the defense and the prosecution with detailed questions about key phrases in the Espionage Act and about precisely how Mr. Trump went about designating the records he took as personal property, there was one important subject that she did not broach: the timing of the trial.
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