The Lawyers for former US President Donald Trump appealed yesterday, Thursday, to a federal court requesting to dismiss charges against him that he illegally kept classified documents after he left the White House, arguing that he enjoys criminal immunity.
The Republican presidential nominee is accused in the case of endangering US security by keeping classified documents after leaving the White House at his Florida residence instead of turning them over to the National Archives as owed by law.
He then allegedly acted to thwart investigators' efforts to recover them.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all 40 counts of the indictment filed in Florida by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
In their 20-page filing, Trump's lawyers say that when he withdrew the documents from the White House, he was president and therefore it was an official act.
“President Trump made this decision while still in office. The alleged decision was an official act and as such is subject to presidential immunity,” the complaint states.
Targeted by four separate criminal charges, the front-runner in November's Republican presidential primary is seeking to go to trial as late as possible with his many appeals.
He used the same argument against his indictment in federal court for conspiracy against the US state after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by Joe Biden, which led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by a crowd of his supporters.
At the beginning of the month, A federal appeals court ruled that his claim for immunity was not supported by the US Constitution. Trump then appealed to the Supreme Court in an attempt to obtain a stay of execution of this decision.
The question of the criminal immunity of a former US president has never been decided by US courts because until the Trump case no other former president had ever been charged with a crime.
Source: News Beast
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