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Special Counsel responds to Trump’s attempt to dismiss documents case: “Even if it had merit (which it does not)”

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office filed its responses to a series of Trump lawyers’ attempts to get the federal documents case in Florida thrown out, citing things like

  • the Presidential Records Act (which explicitly does not give a former president permission to retain classified documents as personal records);
  • the appointment and funding of the Special Counsel (a real long shot that, should Judge Aileen Cannon accept the argument, would undermine every investigation of a Special Counsel in recent history);
  • a claim of “selective and vindictive prosecution” based on the fact that others like Obama, Biden, and Pence weren’t prosecuted even though they, too, possessed classified records after their terms in office expired (except the others returned the documents when found and didn’t lie about possessing them);
  • a claim of “presidential immunity” (which clearly doesn’t apply to actions by someone who was not President when he repeatedly lied to federal officials about his retention of the documents in question); and finally
  • an argument that the law doesn’t apply because it’s “unconstitutionally vague” when it comes to how it would be applied to him personally, a former president (who gets no special treatment than other citizens because of his old job).

Amusingly, Trump had cited his status as a previous “Q” security clearance holder while he was President–it expired the second Joe Biden was sworn in–as justification for holding on to classified records related to US nuclear stockpiles years later while he ran a supper club in Palm Beach.  “[E]ven if Trump possessed a Q clearance at any time after his Presidency (which he did not), that would still not entitle him to possess the document charged in Count 19 at Mar-aLago, an active social club that was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Thus, Trump’s retention of the document was unauthorized and willful, as charged in the Superseding Indictment.”

Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019

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