A federal judge rejected former President Trump’s efforts to dismiss his Mar-a-Lago documents case on Thursday, saying that the more than 300 classified records found at his property could have been his personal records.
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon's decision comes after special counsel Jack Smith urged her to quickly reject Trump’s claims that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) allowed him to consider the national security records his personal property.
Cannon stated in the three-page ruling that “The Presidential Records Act does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss.”
Though the ruling is a victory for Smith, Cannon did not rule out Trump’s ability to raise the issue at trial. She also used a significant portion of the brief ruling to criticize the special counsel over comments made in a previous filing urging her to expedite the case.
Thursday’s ruling came about six weeks after Trump’s attempt to dismiss the case. Legal experts anticipated that his PRA arguments would be swiftly dismissed by the court.
Smith had argued in court filings that the notion of Trump deeming such records as his personal property was a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”
In a Tuesday filing, his team wrote, “It would be purely fictional to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the President of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private.’”
“Based on the current record, the PRA should not play any role at trial at all.”
Trump is mainly being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, which prohibits the willful retention of national defense information. He is also charged with obstruction of justice for attempting to hide the records from authorities after they requested their return. Prosecutors argued that the PRA did not affect Trump’s ability to keep the documents.
However, Cannon appeared to acknowledge Trump’s arguments that the records might be considered personal property under the PRA, and asked both sides to evaluate competing jury instructions that would advise jurors on the matter.
Those instructions prompted a response from Smith on Tuesday, expressing prosecutors' frustration with Cannon’s slow progress on the case and emphasizing the importance of her “promptly deciding” the matter.
Cannon rebuked this on Thursday, noting that the PRA argument could still be presented to the jurors.
“To the extent the Special Counsel demands an anticipatory finalization of jury instructions prior to trial, prior to a charge conference, and prior to the presentation of trial defenses and evidence, the Court declines that demand as unprecedented and unjust,” Cannon wrote.
She clarified that her request for the jury instructions should not be “misconstrued” as supporting Trump’s argument.
“Nor should it be interpreted as anything other than what it was: a genuine attempt, in the context of the upcoming trial, to better understand the parties’ competing positions and the questions to be submitted to the jury,” Cannon wrote.
Updated at 3:58 p.m. ET
