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Former US President Donald Trump attends a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan on April 2, 2024.
CNN
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Former President Donald Trump suffered two major setbacks Thursday in his attempt to derail the criminal case against him. The judges in the Georgia election interference case and the federal classified documents case both rejected bids in those cases by potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates. I was thrown out.
The judges in both cases ruled on other requests filed by President Trump to dismiss Georgia and federal prosecutors, filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Special Counsel Jack Smith, respectively. Haven't made a decision yet. But for now, the prospect that the case will eventually be tried by a jury remains open, with a trial on the third criminal charge against Trump (a campaign hush money case filed in New York in 2016) starting this month. It is planned.
Aside from the New York case, it's still unclear whether other charges against Trump, including a federal election-subversion case brought by a special counsel in Washington, D.C., will go to trial before the November election. Delay was a key part of the former president's strategy, with great success in extending prosecutors' pretrial proceedings against him. The Washington, D.C., case was at one point the fastest-moving criminal case against Trump, but the Supreme Court is considering whether Trump's status as a former president confers immunity from these criminal charges. Currently on hold while Those discussions are scheduled for this month.
President Trump has made similar claims of presidential immunity in the Georgia case and the classified documents case. He has pleaded not guilty to all four criminal charges.
In an ongoing classified documents case in South Florida, U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon on Thursday asked for the case to be dismissed based on claims that Trump had the authority to carry classified and classified documents after he left the White presidency. Trump's request was rejected. House.
But Cannon's brief order left open the possibility that Trump could use the argument in his own defense at trial or raise it in other pretrial proceedings.
The Trump-appointed judge did not elaborate on his opinion on the president's claims under a law known as the Presidential Records Act, but Trump's lawyers have set legal standards for dismissing the charges. He said it was not satisfied.
She wrote that prosecutors “made no reference to the Presidential Records Act” in filing the charges against Trump and did not “rely on” the law in filing the charges.
Cannon also used the order to push back on a request for a special counsel to make a final ruling on whether the theory could be incorporated into jury instructions in the final trial, and that prosecutors should not The decision can now be appealed to the 11th Circuit. She called the “demands” “unprecedented and unreasonable.”
There are still more than a dozen motions pending for Cannon to decide, including several other motions to dismiss the case.
In the Georgia election subversion case, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee rejected President Trump's argument that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment.
“The defense has not presented any authority that the speech constitutes protected political speech, and the court cannot find one,” the Atlanta district judge wrote in his order.
McAfee's ruling is the latest step forward in the state extortion case against Trump. Willis has indicated he is ready to go to trial as early as August, but the judge has not yet set trial dates for Trump or the remaining 14 co-defendants in the Peach State.
The decision comes as some of Trump's fellow defendants are considering a gag order against Willis following his public comments about the case.
McAfee's refusal to drop the charges comes after free speech advocates have repeatedly come up short in pre-trial disputes in election interference cases.
“By liberally interpreting the language of the indictment in favor of the state, as required at this pretrial stage, the court found that the expressions and actions of the defendants were allegedly committed in furtherance of criminal activity. McAfee said in the order issued on Thursday that he had found that the statement amounted to “knowingly and knowingly made false statements regarding the matter “within the agency's jurisdiction that were likely to deceive or harm the government.'' Ta.
McAfee previously rejected similar First Amendment challenges from other defendants in the Georgia case. In a federal election interference case brought in Washington, DC, Judge Tanya Chutkan also heard and rejected arguments by the special counsel that President Trump's actions should be considered protected political speech.
The Fulton County District Attorney's Office declined to comment on Thursday's order from McAfee.
Trump's Georgia attorney, Steve Sadow, said in a statement that Trump and the other defendants “respectfully disagree” with the ruling and will consider their options.
“Importantly, the court's decision made clear that defendants are not prohibited from 're-raising the applicable objections at an appropriate time after the factual record has been established,'” Sadow said. his statement said.
A new order from Cannon in the federal secrets case is a loss for President Trump, but prosecutors will give the judge a clearer explanation of how they view the Presidential Records Act in relation to the case. This request was also refused.
Mr. Smith made the request as Mr. Cannon ordered both sides to submit hypothetical jury instructions that took into account Mr. Trump's claims for broad record-keeping powers.
Cannon defended the exercise in Thursday's order, saying it was “in its essence a genuine attempt to better understand the opposing positions of the parties and the questions to be posed in the context of the upcoming trial.” It should not be construed as meaning anything other than that.” Jurors in this complex case are influenced by first impressions. ”
The post-Watergate PRA governs how presidential records should be handled after the end of the administration, including turning them over to the National Archives. President Trump argued that under the law, he has the ultimate authority to decide which documents are his personal records and which he is allowed to keep.
Prosecutors maintain that the PRA is unrelated to the charges. In a court filing, they argued that Trump's theory that the law allows classified records to be designated as personal documents is a “hoax” concocted months after he took office.
Cannon said Thursday that her request for jury instructions “should not be misconstrued as declaring a final definition of the material elements of this case or the defenses asserted.”
This article and headline have been updated with additional reporting.
