Former President Donald Trump used a significant portion of his speech in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Tuesday to lay out the legal defense his team is likely to take against an indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
Trump spoke to a crowd of supporters and family members hours after pleading not guilty to 37 counts of charges linked to his handling of classified documents. He decried the indictment as a political hit job meant to derail his bid for the White House.
In outlining his defense, the former president particularly focused on the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Trump suggested that the act gives the president discretion to determine which records are personal and which are presidential, and, as a result, belong to the public.
While the documents Trump is being charged with illegally retaining do not fit the criteria to be personal records under the act, Trump referred to a 2012 district court ruling in a case concerning audio tapes former President Bill Clinton kept after leaving the White House. In that decision, Judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded that even though Clinton’s tapes should have been classified as presidential records and turned over to the National Archives, the national archivist didn’t have the power to reclassify them.
“Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the president,” Jackson wrote.
Trump had previously hinted at this line of defense, jokingly referring to the lawsuit by Judicial Watch as the “Clinton socks” case, because Clinton had kept the tapes of his interviews with historian Taylor Branch stored in a sock drawer. Unlike the Clinton tapes, the documents in Trump’s possession had classification markers. It remains to be seen how the former president’s defense team will construct their argument.
“Now just think of it, in other words, whatever documents the president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. It’s an absolute right. This is the law,” Trump said.
In an indictment unsealed on June 9, the special counsel charged Trump with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and six counts including conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealing documents, and false statements.
