Trump lawyers hint at legal defense in filing highlighting bias, White House involvement, and ignored evidence

Lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago documents case provided some hints in a Tuesday night filing about how they might approach the Republican front-runner's legal defense.

Trump's team appears to be gearing up to argue that the case against him was a stitch-up from the beginning — a "crusade" reliant on a myopic reading of the available facts launched by the Biden administration and antipathetic bureaucrats with the aim of kneecapping the Republican ahead of the 2024 election.

What's the background?

Trump, like President Joe Biden, Barack Obama and former Vice President Mike Pence, kept sensitive documents after leaving office. Unlike Biden, Obama, and Pence, however, Trump had his property raided by armed agents, was subjected to a penetrating FBI investigation, and now faces scores of criminal charges.

The original indictment, filed by Biden Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith on June 8, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, listed 37 felony counts against Trump, including 31 counts of willful retention of classified documents; one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice; one count of scheme to conceal; and one count of making false statements and representations.

Prior to the indictment, Smith's aide reportedly first met with Biden staffers for a "case-related interview."

In July, Trump was slapped with a superseding indictment listing an additional three federal criminal charges.

Strategy coming into focus

Lawyers for Trump indicated in their Tuesday motion that the prosecution has withheld critical evidence that would serve both to contradict various claims levied against the former president and highlight the "politically motivated" nature of the case.

Citing evidence obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, the motion notes that "politically motivated operatives in the Biden Administration and the National Archives and Records Administration ('NARA') began this crusade against President Trump in 2021."

"The FOIA releases, coupled with other evidence scattered throughout more than 1.2 million pages of discovery, reflect close participation in the investigation by NARA and Biden Administration components such as the White House Counsel's Office, as well as senior officials at DOJ and FBI. These revelations are disturbing but not surprising," continued the motion.

Among the material Trump's lawyers want exposed and brought into evidence are White House records, especially communications between Smith's team and Biden officials. The motion underscores in particular the need for National Security Council and White House Counsel's Office documents to be brought to light.

Trump lawyers Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche suggested to Judge Aileen Cannon that the NSC "was responsible for the creation and handling of many of the documents at issue, and the Special Counsel's Office will be required to rely on personnel from the National Security Council at trial to demonstrate that the documents it authored are classified and constitute information 'relating to the national defense.'"

White House Counsel's Office records were deemed similarly of interest by the defense, as they "repeatedly supported the investigative activities," according to the motion.

"Although the Biden Administration clearly took steps to create a false appearance of separation from the investigation that it was driving, these White House components cannot escape the import of these activities for purposes of the prosecution-team analysis. The Special Counsel's Office must produce discoverable information from the White House's files," said the motion.

Trump's team also seeks records from deeper in the state, including from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and from the Department of Energy, the latter of which is said to have "retroactively terminate[d]" a security clearance for the former president following his June indictment.

Besides drawing attention to bias on the part of NARA and a possible coordinated effort involving the White House to kneecap Biden's top rival ahead of the 2024 election, the legal team argued to Cannon that:

• Smith's office has an "affirmative obligation to collect and produce discoverable evidence in the possession of the entire prosecution team";
• Smith's office must be compelled to comply with their discovery obligations;
• contrary to prosecutors' claims, the location where the records were stored — his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida — was secure; and
• there has been investigative misconduct on the part of the various elements of the prosecution.

The Associated Press indicated that prosecutors will likely argue to Judge Cannon that much of the requested materials are irrelevant to the case.

The trial is tentatively scheduled to kick off on May 20.

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