U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case, set a hearing for Thursday to address the former president’s motions to dismiss the case.
The hearing will focus on “Trump's motion to dismiss classified docs counts 1-32 on unconstitutional vagueness claims and Trump+Nauta motion to dismiss superseding indictment on the Presidential Records Act,” The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported, noting that it suggests Cannon may want to figure out “whether to grant subsequent evidentiary hearings as requested by Trump and opposed by Special Counsel.”
Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday rejected Trump’s claim that he was allowed to deem government records as personal under the Presidential Records Act.
The documents marked classified "are indisputably presidential, not personal,” Smith argued. "Trump was not authorized to possess classified records at all.” Smith’s filing also rejected
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Sunday questioned why Cannon selected the Presidential Records Act motion as well as another on the constitutional vagueness of the first 32 counts in the indictment out of the seven motions Trump’s team submitted.
“Why did she choose those?” Rubin questioned. "One possibility is she's looking to toss the case, and she's looking to toss it on something other than constitutional immunity grounds, because there is a fear that if the Supreme Court were to uphold, for example, the DC Circuit, she can't go against that. She'll be overturned.
"So, she's looking for, potentially, another reason to throw out the case," Rubin continued. "The Presidential Records Act argument is entirely frivolous. Trump is very fond of comparing it to, what he calls, the 'Clinton socks case'. That's a case involving audio tapes that Bill Clinton made with a biographer. And the reasoning in that case turns on the fact that the judge considered those more akin to diaries, which, by the way, are exempt from the President Records Act. So, it's not analogous at all. Curious to see how that argument goes on Thursday, but why those two motions in particular?"
