'Baseless and untenable': Trump pleads for Mar-a-Lago judge to dismiss charges on eve of discovery hearing [View all]
Source: Law & Crime
Mar 13th, 2024, 7:11 pm
Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday filed long-anticipated reply briefs arguing why the charges against him should be dismissed in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. In two separate filings, attorneys representing the 45th president again asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to drop the charges.
The briefs direct their focus on recent arguments against dismissal made by special counsel Jack Smith – and come on the eve of a hearing in southern Florida dedicated to hashing out those issues.
Unconstitutional Vagueness
In their February motion to dismiss on vagueness, defense lawyers argued 18 USC § 793(e) – the Espionage Act statute, which forms the basis of the first 32 counts in the superseding indictment – has long been considered somewhat legally problematic, resulting in numerous courts that have “endeavored to ‘save’ the statute.” “Those claims are unfounded,” Smith argued in the government’s opposition motion last week.
Trump’s Wednesday filing accuses the government of conceding that “judicial gloss” is necessary to make the Espionage Act claims work against the former president. The defense claims this is little more than evidence that prior courts have gone beyond the text of the law to “save statutes that Congress should have written more clearly.”
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/baseless-and-untenable-trump-pleads-for-mar-a-lago-judge-to-dismiss-charges-on-eve-of-discovery-hearing/
Links to court filings (PDF) -
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652.398.0.pdf
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652.399.0.pdf
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