A federal judge denied former President Trump’s efforts to toss his Mar-a-Lago documents case by arguing that the more than 300 classified records recovered from his property could have been considered personal records.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon comes after special counsel Jack Smith urged her to promptly reject Trump’s claims that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to deem the national security records his personal property.
“The Presidential Records Act does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss,” Cannon wrote in the three-page ruling.
The ruling, made roughly six weeks after Trump’s effort to toss the case, came after legal experts expected the matter to be quickly dismissed by the court.
Smith in court filings had called the idea that Trump could consider such records to be his personal property “pure fiction.”
“It would be pure fiction 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,’” his team wrote in a Tuesday filing.
Trump is largely being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, which prohibits the willful retention of national defense information. He is also charged with obstruction of justice for seeking to conceal the records from authorities after they demanded their return.
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