Lawyers for Donald Trump sought to persuade U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon to toss evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago in the classified documents case.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon signaled Friday that Donald Trump’s legal team had not convinced her FBI agents offered false information to justify searching Mar-a-Lago — a potential blow to the former president’s efforts to disqualify key evidence in the classified documents case against him.
Trump’s attorneys asked Cannon to grant what is known as a Franks hearing, a chance to show that the government intentionally misled a magistrate judge when seeking a warrant to search for classified material at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and private club, more than a year after he left office.
The defense lawyers argued, among other things, that Justice Department officials should have written on the affidavit that sitting presidents are unique because they do not require security clearances to view sensitive government information. Cannon was skeptical.
“But he is post-presidency,” she told Trump lawyer Emil Bove, adding that she didn’t see how the agent did anything wrong in this instance. “I have a hard time seeing what more language is needed.”
If Cannon agreed to hold a Franks hearing, and ruled in the defense’s favor after that hearing, she could toss the evidence that investigators collected when they executed the search warrant — the bulk of the evidence in the classified documents case.
The bar for allowing such a hearing is high. Judges typically require the defense to show significant evidence that investigators intentionally falsified information before granting one.
Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s election, faces 40 counts of willfully retaining classified information and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, national security violations that typically would bring prison upon conviction.
