A federal judge refused on Thursday to throw out the classified documents prosecution against Donald Trump, rejecting a defense argument that the case should be tossed because he was entitled as a former president to retain the records after he left office.
Lawyers for Trump had cited a 1978 statute known as the Presidential Records Act in arguing that he was permitted to designate records from his time in office as personal and take them with him when he left the White House.
Prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team vigorously opposed that argument, saying the statute had no relevance in a case concerning classified documents.
US district judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, sided with the government in a three-page order, writing that the indictment makes “no reference to the Presidential Records Act, nor do they rely on that statute for purposes of stating an offense”.
Trump faces 40 charges arising from his retention of classified information after leaving the White House and alleged obstruction of attempts to recover such records. He has pleaded not guilty.
Separately, earlier it emerged Trump is scheduled to be deposed in a civil case in New York, by lawyers for co-founders of his social media company as part of a dispute over ownership in Trump Media & Technology Group.
A notice filed with Delaware’s court of chancery, where the co-founders sued Trump Media, said the deposition is scheduled for 15 April at 10am ET in New York.
Also on 15 April, jury selection will begin in a court in Manhattan in the first ever criminal trial of a former US president, related to payments to Stormy Daniels and a subsequent financial cover-up during the 2016 election. Trump denies the charges.
In the civil case, the notice of deposition did not specify the questions. The parties involved did not comment. Trump Media, the controversial company which owns the Truth Social messaging platform, began trading on the stock market last week.
Depositions often get rescheduled.
The company was sued in February by Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, two former contestants on Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice.
They accused Trump Media of denying them their stake, which they own through their United Atlantic Ventures partnership, by trying to dilute their stock and by preventing them from selling it.
Trump then also sued Litinsky and Moss, in Florida on 24 March, and is seeking to strip them of their stock, saying they failed to earn it, because of mismanagement. The parties did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Meanwhile, a Georgia judge on Thursday rejected Trump’s bid to dismiss criminal charges in the state’s 2020 election interference case against him, which the former US president argued violate his free speech rights.
The Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee found that the indictment alleges statements by Trump and others charged in the case were made “in furtherance of criminal activity” and are not protected by the first amendment to the US constitution, that protects free speech.
Trump and the other defendants have been charged with racketeering and other offenses over their effort to overturn Trump’s defeat in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, who was inaugurated in 2021 despite a long campaign by Trump in multiple fora to reverse the result.
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Biden is now running for re-election, as the presumptive Democratic party nominee, while Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee following a primary season where he saw off multiple challengers despite being a defendant in several criminal and civil court cases. The defendants in the Georgia case have pleaded not guilty.
The Georgia charges focus on attempts to assemble an alternate slate of presidential electors pledged to vote for Trump – despite Biden’s historic win in the state – and Trump’s January 2021 phone call urging the state’s top election official to “find” enough votes to overturn his narrow defeat.
McAfee’s ruling is a signal he will continue moving the case toward trial even as Trump and eight co-defendants continue their efforts to disqualify the district attorney, Fani Willis, the prosecutor overseeing the case. A Georgia appeals court is set to decide whether to take up that issue in the coming weeks.
McAfee said it will be up to a jury to determine if Trump and other defendants, which include his former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, acted with criminal intent.
Trump has other pending challenges to the case, including a claim that he is immune from charges tied to official actions he took as president.
Reuters contributed reporting
