(CN) — Federal prosecutors tore into Donald Trump’s defenses in the classified document case, arguing in new filings that the former president offered bogus claims to avoid trial.
Special counsel Jack Smith filed responses Thursday in the U.S. District Court of South Florida to more than a dozen motions that Trump and his co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, filed in recent weeks seeking to dismiss their charges.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee, scheduled a March 14 hearing for arguments on three of the defenses.
Trump stands accused of hiding classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, resort Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House. Federal prosecutors say Nauta and De Oliveira conspired with their boss to stop federal authorities from seizing the records and tried to destroy incriminating security footage.
The former president filed motions last month seeking to dismiss the case for several reasons, including presidential immunity, vindictive prosecution, vagueness in the law and protection under the Presidential Records Act.
De Oliveira and Nauta joined in some of the president’s defenses and separately claimed there was insufficient evidence to charge them as co-conspirators.
Smith argued Trump’s presidential immunity claim was “frivolous.”
Trump had already left office when he decided to hide hundreds of classified documents and defy a grand jury subpoena, Smith said, actions that clearly did not constitute "official presidential conduct."
“Trump’s immunity claim here is so wholly without merit that it is difficult to understand it except as part of a strategic effort for delay,” the prosecutor wrote.
Trump’s claim that The Espionage Act of 1917 is unconstitutionally vague is also meritless, Smith argued. The law is clear — no one may willfully retain national defense information unless they are entitled to it.
As the former president, “Trump could not have failed to understand the paramount importance of protecting the nation’s national-security and military secrets,” the prosecutor wrote.
Similar arguments for immunity under the Presidential Records Act were also misguided, Smith said. The 1978 law governs documents related to a president’s performance of duty, not classified documents.
Trump claimed in another motion he was being vindictively targeted for prosecution, pointing to prior decisions not to charge officials for retaining classified documents after leaving government.
But the former president’s actions were far different from other government officials who retained classified documents through carelessness and returned them upon discovery, Smith responded.
He claims the prosecution is vindictive, “but he has not identified anyone who has engaged in a remotely similar battery of criminal conduct and not been prosecuted as a result,” Smith said.
Smith argued none of the motions deserved evidentiary hearings.
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