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Trump team to make two arguments in court to get classified documents case dismissed
Washington — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers will be trying to convince a federal judge in Florida Thursday to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against him.
Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on two motions filed by Trump, one that says the former president is shielded from prosecution by a federal recordkeeping law, and another that claims one of the charges presents numerous open legal questions.
It will be the second hearing in as many weeks when Trump’s team and prosecutors in Smith’s office face each other in Cannon’s courtroom.
Smith charged Trump with 32 counts of unlawfully retaining classified government records after he allegedly took documents from the White House during the presidential transition. The former president and two aides are also accused of engaging in a scheme to obstruct investigations. All three have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
In one of several motions to dismiss filed late last month, Trump argued that the case should be tossed because as president, he had “unreviewable discretion” to make any document personal in nature. His attorneys contend that the Presidential Records Act “preclude[d] judicial review” over his recordkeeping.
“President Trump was still the President of the United States when, for example, many of the documents at issue were packed (presumably by the GSA), transported, and delivered to Mar-A-Lago,” Trump’s team argued in its filing. Past precedent should have prevented prosecutors from opening a criminal investigation in the first place, they said, which would also disqualify the obstruction charges he faces.
That argument is “wrong,” the special counsel wrote in a filing of his own, telling Cannon the sensitive government records Trump is accused of illegally retaining “are indisputably presidential, not personal” and therefore belong to the government.
After he left office, “Trump was not authorized to possess classified records at all (let alone at unsecured locations at Mar-a-Lago, as the Superseding Indictment alleges),” prosecutors wrote.
“The PRA does not exempt Trump from the criminal law, entitle him to unilaterally declare highly classified presidential records to be personal records, or shield him from criminal investigations—let alone allow him to obstruct a federal investigation with impunity.”
Trump has long claimed that he had a right to hold onto the records because of the federal government classification authority he held while he was president, but prosecutors alleged the federal government — from archivists to investigators — had undertaken a year-long effort to retrieve the missing documents.
Trump returned 15 boxes of documents that included papers with classified markings in January 2022. A grand jury later issued a subpoena for records that yielded a handful more, according to investigators. Then the FBI executed a court-authorized search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that uncovered hundreds of sensitive records stored in unsecured locations.
“The Special Counsel’s Office cannot escape the import of the PRA’s textual commitments of discretion and authority to President Trump during his first term,” Trump’s lawyers argued in a response Wednesday.
The second motion that will be considered Thursday is based on Trump’s contention that there are many open legal questions about the law known as the Espionage Act, which he has been accused of violating. Trump’s lawyers argue the unsettled legal questions amount to an unconstitutional vagueness.
Smith also rebutted this claim, writing in court papers, “Trump’s vagueness argument is meritless. Trump is charged with the unauthorized possession and willful retention of national defense information. The statute’s prohibitions are clear.”
Trump and his co-defendants in the documents case have asked for hearings on other motions to dismiss filed last month, including on claims of vindictive prosecution and presidential immunity. Smith has opposed all of those motions and the question of presidential immunity. The latter issue will be considered by the Supreme Court next month in a separate case tied to Smith’s 2020-election related charges against Trump in Washington, D.C.
That criminal trial is on hold until the high court issues its ruling.
Prosecutors say Trump’s team is just trying to delay the trial in Florida, and argued the criminal proceedings should begin in July. Judge Cannon held a hearing on the trial schedule on March 1, but she has not yet ruled. The defense team claims a fair trial wouldn’t be possible before the 2024 presidential election, but then offered an August or September date, should the judge deem it necessary to move forward with the trial.
Thursday’s hearing comes a day after a county judge in Georgia dismissed three charges against Trump as part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ 2020 election interference case. The former president still faces other counts in that case. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Earlier this week, Cannon granted Trump’s request for a 10-day extension to file additional paperwork tied to other motions to dismiss the case.
In Hollywood, a land known for marquees and famous signs, there’s probably no sign that’s more on the nose than the store Just Food For Dogs. There, four-legged customers sample today’s offerings, while their owners stock up on the food.
Sarah Rector and her French bulldog, Lulu, are buying her regular order, including beef with russet potato, and venison with squash. Rector says she feels better buying the store’s food for Lulu rather than commercial dog food: “I just know that she’s getting the best possible, like, ingredients and health and overall wellness.”
She and her husband don’t have children, yet, but they have another French bulldog, “so I feel like we have kids.”
It’s tempting to write this off as a trendy L.A. fad, but Just Food For Dogs president Carey Tischler says this store is here because of a permanent shift in the roughly $50 billion U.S. pet food industry. “The last year of research shows that 82% of families think of pets as family, or as children, and that’s up significantly,” he said.
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Joe Ovalle is Just Food’s guest experience manager. He says all of their pet food is approved by the USDA for human consumption. “It is human-grade food, something you and I could eat,” he said.
He sampled one of their recipes, for fish and sweet potato. “Oh my God, it’s like ceviche,” he smiled.
It may seem a bit indulgent, and can cost double the price of Kibbles, but some say that feeding our dogs natural food is what we should have been doing all along – and making it yourself can cost the same as buying food from the store.
“It’s about going back to what is biologically appropriate, that they ate for tens of thousands of years,” said pet nutritionist Christine Filardi. “They ate prey animals and table scraps. So, I’m just educating people on how to go back to what they ate for tens of thousands of years prior to commercial pet food.”
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Filardi is author of “Home Cooking For Your Dog,” a cookbook offering recipes with what she says are the three necessities: animal protein, a carb, and a veggie, as well as a few extravagant treats, like her bacon and cream cheese muffins.
Filardi says whether it’s store-bought or home-cooked fresh food, the results are the same: well-fed animals live longer, have cheaper vet bills, and are happier … which makes the owners happy, too.
“They take such good care of us,” she said. “We should take good care of them.”
RECIPE (FOR DOGS): Hearty Hamburgers
RECIPE (FOR DOGS): Friday Playdate Pizza
RECIPE (FOR DOGS): Bacon and Cream Cheese Muffins
RECIPE (FOR DOGS): Ground Turkey, Quinoa, and Carrots
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Story produced by John Goodwin. Editor: Joseph Frandino.
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The island of Maui is a mere dot in the enormity of the vast Pacific Ocean, but it’s not hard to see why millions visit every year, and why there are some who never want to leave. Fleetwood Mac founder Mick Fleetwood fell in love with Maui decades ago, and put down deep roots. “Long story, a long love affair,” he said.
“But it really is your heart and your home?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. People often think, ‘Oh yeah, how often are you on Maui?'” Fleetwood said. “This is my home. No other place.”
As a young man he’d dreamed of a place, a club, where he could get his friends together, and 12 years ago he made it happen in the west Maui city of Lahaina: Fleetwood’s on Front Street. The menu was eclectic – they served everything from Biddie’s Chicken (just like Fleetwood’s mom, Biddie, made it) to cookie dough desserts dreamed up by his children. It was also a place where Mick and friends could play. “We created, I created, a band of people under a roof,” he said. “Instead of a traveling circus, it was a resident circus at Fleetwood’s on Front Street.”
And then, in August of 2023, the music stopped.
A wind-driven fire tore through western Maui, killing more than a hundred people, and consuming more than 2,000 buildings. Fleetwood was in Los Angeles when the fire started, and he hurried back to a scene of utter devastation.
And his beloved restaurant? A charred sign was about all that was left.
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I said, “I understand your not wanting to be, ‘Me, me, me,’ especially in light of the lives that were lost, the homes that were lost; you don’t want to make too big of a deal out of a restaurant.”
“No.”
“But at the same time, this was your family. This was your home. That must’ve been a huge loss.”
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“It was a huge loss,” Fleetwood said. “And in the reminding of it, that wave comes back. Today knowing we’re doing this, I go, like, Okay, this is gonna be … a day.“
We took a walk with Fleetwood down the street where his place once stood: the last time he was here, the place was still smoldering. “Literally, parts of it were still hot,” he said.
More than a year later, the Lahaina waterfront is still very much a disaster zone.
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The decision about what to do with the land is still up in the air; the priority is housing for the displaced residents. But Fleetwood says he’s determined to rebuild, just maybe not in the same place.
Asked what he pictures in a new place, he said, “For me, it has to encompass being able to handle playing music. There has to be music. We had it every day. That’s a selfish request!”
But before anything is rebuilt, there’s still a massive cleanup that needs to be completed here.
“We will see,” he said. “You have a blank [canvas] to paint on, and there’s a lot of painting to do.
“You have to be careful, even in this conversation, of going like, ‘How sad that was,’ when really it’s about, ‘Yes, but now we need this.’ In the end you go like, it happened. And what’s really important is absorbing maybe how all these things happened, and can they be circumnavigated to be more safe in the future, and be more aware? Of course that’s part of it. But the real, real essence is the future.”
Fleetwood’s ukelele is one of the few things that survived the fire, and he’s hoping his dream survives as well.
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For details about helping those impacted by the August 2023 fires, and for the latest on recovery and rebuilding efforts, including housing, environmental protection and cultural restoration, visit the official county website Maui Recovers.
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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