Earlier this week, Judge Aileen Cannon — who's presiding over Donald Trump's classified documents case — set a date to hear the ex-president's motion "to dismiss counts 1-32 on unconstitutional vagueness claims" and former Trump aide Walt Nauta's motion to "dismiss superseding indictment on the Presidential Records Act [PRA]." The hearing will take place Thursday, March 14.
On the same day, special counsel Jack Smith submitted a court filing condemning Trump's argument that the classified documents were his "personal" records under the PRA, saying "reliance on the PRA as a basis for dismissing the indictment is wrong. The PRA does not exempt Trump from the criminal law, entitle him to unilaterally declare highly classified presidential records to be personal records, or shield him from criminal investigations—let alone allow him to obstruct a federal investigation with impunity."
According to Politico's Kyle Cheney, in his latest filing "Smith also thrashes Trump's attempt to assert presidential immunity for is Florida indictment as 'so wholly without merit that it is difficult to understand it except as part of a strategic effort for delay.'"
READ MORE: Judge Cannon sets date to hear Trump’s motion to dismiss docs case: report
During Sunday's episode of MSNBC's The Weekend, legal correspondent Lisa Rubin explained to co-host Alicia Menendez what she will be "watching for" during Thursday's hearing.
"Thursday in court, at Fort Pierce, with Judge Cannon — the thing I'm looking for is why did she choose the two motions that she did?" Rubin replied. "She's holding oral argument on two of Trump's seven motions. One of them, as Marcus [Childress] noted, is on the Presidential Records Act. The other has to do with the constitutional argument about the first 32 counts being vague. I'm interested to know, why did she choose those?
Rubin continued, "One possibility is she's looking to toss the case, and she's looking to toss it on something other than constitutional immunity grounds, because there is a fear that if the Supreme Court were to uphold, for example, the DC Circuit, she can't go against that. She'll be overturned."
"So, she's looking for, potentially, another reason to throw out the case," Rubin added, emphasizing, "The Presidential Records Act argument is entirely frivolous. Trump is very fond of comparing it to, what he calls, the 'Clinton socks case'. That's a case involving audio tapes that Bill Clinton made with a biographer. And the reasoning in that case turns on the fact that the judge considered those more akin to diaries, which, by the way, are exempt from the President Records Act. So, it's not analogous at all. Curious to see how that argument goes on Thursday, but why those two motions in particular?"
Watch the video below or at this link.
READ MORE: 'Wholly without merit': Jack Smith blasts Trump’s 'personal' records argument in latest filing
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