(Picture by Drew Angerer/Getty Photos)
Final night time, Donald Trump dropped 4 motions to dismiss the Florida paperwork case on the general public docket, plus at the least three extra beneath seal. Each Trump pleading is batshit in its personal guanolicious manner, however the motions primarily based on presidential immunity and the Presidential Records Act (PRA) are particularly egregious. Most saliently, Trump’s legal professionals yaddayaddyadda over precisely how these paperwork stashed within the bathe at Mar-a-Lago really made the transition from presidential to non-public data.
It’s like Joseph Smith’s golden plates. A MAGA simply believes!
“President Trump’s alleged determination to designate data as private beneath the PRA and trigger them to be faraway from the White Home—which underlies Counts 1 via 32 of the Superseding Indictment—was an official act by the incumbent president,” they insist within the immunity movement, with out ever really saying that their consumer did designate the data as private.
“President Trump’s determination to designate data as private and trigger them to be faraway from the White Home plainly constitutes an official act throughout the ‘outer perimeter’ of the president’s official duties,” they argue in PRA movement, including that “The PRA additionally ‘precludes judicial assessment of the President’s recordkeeping practices and selections,’ together with President Trump’s determination to designate supplies as Private Data.”
Each pleadings work from the premise that Trump in some way remodeled dozens of prime secret and categorized paperwork into private data earlier than stuffing them in his baggage and stomping off to Florida. However there’s no reference to precisely when or how such a transubstantiation occurred. The truth is, Trump’s legal professionals give that complete course of a really extensive berth, suggesting that “The Court docket ought to maintain a listening to to resolve any factual disputes referring to the official nature of President Trump’s PRA designation and the elimination of his private data from the White Home.”
Or possibly as an alternative of a listening to to resolve disputes of truth, Choose Aileen Cannon would possibly need to maintain … a trial?
There are about 1,000,000 the explanation why Trump’s legal professionals would need to keep away from specifics concerning the “private” journey of these official paperwork, chief amongst them being their consumer and his allies have mentioned some extraordinarily loopy shit on this matter.
At a CNN City Corridor in Could, he told reporter Kaitlan Collins that any beforehand categorized supplies “grew to become robotically declassified after I took them,” even insisting that he “would have the best to” present them to anybody he appreciated. His minion Kash Patel even claimed to have been current when Trump laid palms on the paperwork and rendered them private property. Possibly by Reiki, though Patel pled the Fifth when subpoenaed about his claims, and solely testified beneath a grant of immunity by Choose Beryl Howell in DC.
Trump’s legal professionals additionally cite to Judicial Watch, Inc. v. NARA, 845 F. Supp. 2nd 288 (D.D.C. 2012), AKA “The Socks Case,” AKA “The Clinton Socks Case,” AKA “The Sock Drawer Case,” AKA “That Ruling That Trump’s Been Yelling About For Two Years Because Tom Fitton Said It Mattered.” In Socks, Choose Amy Berman Jackson mentioned the PRA didn’t give her the authority to order the Nationwide Archives (NARA) to grab tapes made by Invoice Clinton for his biographer Taylor Department. Tom Fitton, the spandex-shirted head of Judicial Watch, satisfied Trump that Socks means no court docket can ever query a president’s designation of a report as private.
By this logic, Trump was entitled to pocket all the nationwide safety archive and promote it to Putin, a maximalist declare which is functionally equal to the “SEAL Team 6” argument Trump’s legal professionals made to the DC Circuit. There, Choose Florence Pan obtained legal professional John Sauer to confess that, sure, he was really claiming that the president might have his political opponent assassinated and escape prosecution if he wasn’t impeached by the Home and convicted by the Senate. These arguments reductio themselves advert absurdum, however that hasn’t stopped Trump from making them.
And whereas they’re saying completely ridiculous issues, Trump’s lawyer counsel that Choose Cannon is certain by Choose Jackson’s 2012 District Court docket ruling in Socks, however not by the DC Circuit’s rejection of Trump’s immunity claims.
“President Trump is pursuing additional assessment of that faulty determination, together with en banc assessment if allowed, and assessment within the U.S. Supreme Court docket if needed,” they sniff. “This Court docket mustn’t comply with the D.C. Circuit’s non-binding, poorly reasoned determination.”
Be aware that they aren’t asking her to attend for the Supreme Court docket to weigh in, however fairly to just accept Trump’s immunity claims — undergirded by nebulous claims of declassifying paperwork by telekinesis — and dismiss the case instantly.
It’s a daring technique, Cotton! And, as journalist Marcie Wheeler factors out in her excellent fisking of those motions, Trump’s attorneys have now explicitly admitted that their consumer took these paperwork on function, making it that a lot simpler to show that he deliberately and willfully swiped that stuff and refused to offer it again.
And whereas we’re on the topic, Trump is charged with violating the Espionage Act and obstructing justice — not violating the PRA. However this case is earlier than Choose Aileen Cannon, so YMMV.
US v. Trump [SDFL Docket via Court Listener]
Judicial Watch v. National Archives [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Legislation and Chaos substack and podcast.
