Accepting such an argument would be “pure fiction,” the special counsel argued.
Special counsel Jack Smith, responding on Tuesday to the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, urged her to reverse course on entertaining the idea that Trump had any personal ownership over the classified materials he has been charged with unlawfully possessing.
In a late-night filing replying to an order last month from Judge Aileen Cannon requesting proposed jury instructions that appeared to accept at face value what legal experts have argued is one of Trump’s most fringe defenses – that the former president had unchecked ability to claim all classified records as his personal property – Smith argued that accepting such an argument would not only be “pure fiction,” but “meritless and fatally undermined” by all the evidence gathered by the government as part of their case.
Among that evidence, according to Smith, are interviews with Trump’s own Presidential Records Act representatives and “numerous” high-ranking officials from the White House, none of which “had heard Trump say that he was designating records as personal,”
Executive Order 12958 was amended on March 25, 2003, by Executive Order 13292, to read as follows:
Sec. 4.1. General Restrictions on Access.
(a) A person may have access to classified information provided that:
© Classified information shall remain under the control of the originating agency or its successor in function.
(d) Classified information may not be removed from official premises without proper authorization.
Seems pretty cut and dry to me, but I’m not a paid shill for Trump.
seems to me that the president probably has the power to properly authorize himself to remove classified information, being the chief executive and the commander in chief. is there any reason to suppose he doesn’t?
Brian Butler said he helped Trump aide Walt Nauta load about 10 to 15 boxes onto Trump’s plane at the West Palm Beach airport near his resort in June 2022,
Even if President Trump authorized the movement to Mar-A-Lago, in June 2022 citizen Trump did not have the authorization to have classified documents moved. Now you could argue it was just Butler and Nauta moving these documents and not Trump himself, but that still doesn’t mean Trump had need-to-know to keep these documents on site and that the documents now belong to their authorizing agency. Even if the executive branch was the authorizing agency, the Biden administration is the successor of function and owns these classified documents.
i have to say that this does not seem cut-and-dry. i’m not interested in defending any politician, and trump less than most, but i also think that laws are bad and would err on the side of ignoring or abolishing the law in about every case. given this proclivity, my lack of expertise, and the lack of clarity, i’m of the opinion that this whole endeavor is a big waste of time and energy.
A) he said he doesn’t
B) he’s not the declassification authority on all classified information
can you cite that?
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/government-classification-and-mar-lago-documents
Uh yeah, even the stuff the president has authority for, he’d need an executive authority, which is more than just shouting I DECLARE IT’S DECLASSIFIED in a hallway of the Pentagon.
he’s not a constitutional lawyer
OK so normally when you are accused of a crime, you hire a lawyer who advises you not to talk about the charges. Why? Because then you say dumb shit like “well it was manslaughter because he robbed me” when your defense was focused on casting doubt it was you who pulled the trigger.
In this case, Trump may not be an authority, and that’s the point, it speaks to his INTENT. His intent was clearly to circumvent rules. Why is this even a discussion? This has all been thoroughly parsed.
i don’t hang on every bit of news about trump.
this felt a little condescending, but i suppose some people might need to understand this.