Over the course of roughly three and a half hours in court, Judge Aileen Cannon signaled she was not inclined to toss out the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on the basis of the arguments his lawyers were making Thursday.
Before the judge were two of the nine motions to dismiss that the defendants have filed in the case. One request by Trump argued that the Presidential Records Act – which governs how White House records are handled by an outgoing administration – required that the case be thrown out.
The second argument Cannon heard was Trump’s claim that the law that prosecutors used to charge him for allegedly retaining national defense records without authorization was too vague to be used against him.
Cannon expressed skepticism towards both requests for the charges to be dismissed, and she suggested that some of the issues the Trump legal team was raising would be better left to a jury to consider.
Here’s what to know from Thursday’s hearing:
The morning session was focused on Trump’s argument that the law prohibiting the unlawful retention of national defense information was too ambiguous to be applied to his alleged conduct.
Cannon said it would be an “extraordinary step” for her to throw out those charges on the basis that they were unconstitutionally vague.
“You understand, of course, that finding a statute unconstitutionally vague is an extraordinary step,” she told Trump attorney Emile Bove.
Bove responded: “I understand that it is significant, but it’s warranted here.”
The judge was similarly skeptical of the second Trump request being argued Thursday: that, because he has supposedly unlimited power to decide which documents from…
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