LAWYERS for former US President Donald Trump in a moment of judicial insight acknowledged that the ex-president, may be prosecuted for illegally retaining classified secret government material, which he then refused to give back.
The lawyers and the former president dispute his culpability, but recently in a court filing admitted that it is possible Trump broke the Presidential Records Act taking home these documents.
The stark admission came in court filing about how the "special master" would function to review an estimated 11,000 pages of documents. Trump has claimed the personal right to declassify, though he has not stated that he "declassified" anything seized at Mar-a-Lago. Federal agents in August had executed a court-approved search warrant as the National Archives demanded presidential material be returned.
Federal Judge Raymond Dearie, appointed the special master, issued no rulings, yet was clear that if Trump's side remained silent on whether their client had at some point in his presidency declassified the documents, Dearie was likely to agree with prosecutors that the documents at the heart of the case are still classified.
Trump's legal team has argued that answering the question now could put them at a disadvantage in any future criminal prosecution, or a future legal fight over returning seized documents to Trump. When Trump's defense attorney James M Trusty argues, he should not be forced to disclose declarations and witness statements, yet the judge replied: "My view is you can't have your cake and eat it." An indication that he may not be entirely sympathetic to the former president's attempts to bog down his evaluation with time-consuming questions over the classification status of some of the documents.
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