DON & DUSTED
Donald Trump judge will not throw out evidence in Mar-a-Lago docs case in explosive decision hours before Biden debate
The judge did award Trump's defense a small victory against the DOJ in her ruling
DONALD Trump's defense team has suffered a legal defeat in their attempts to suppress key evidence connected to the Justice Department's classified documents investigation.
The decision came hours before the former commander-in-chief, 78, is set to lock horns with rival Joe Biden during the first presidential debate on Thursday evening in Atlanta.
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A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Trump in June 2023 after FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago estate and uncovered about 100 pages of classified documents.
Trump's legal team was in Fort Pierce, Florida, arguing with Judge Aileen Cannon, who sits on the bench for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida and was appointed by Trump in 2020, to suppress evidence collected by federal officials during their August 8, 2022, raid at Mar-a-Lago.
Cannon granted the defense's request for a separate hearing on whether the Department of Justice violated the former president's attorney-client privilege when they obtained a cascade of personal notes from Trump's former lawyer, Evan Corcoran.
Corcoran, who represented Trump during the early stages of the classified records probe, recorded a detailed reflection of his conversation with the former president about the investigation, according to The New York Times.
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In his notes, which the defense is attempting to keep off the record from the trial, Corcoran described how Trump repeatedly blamed his legal troubles on his "political enemies," prosecutors claim.
Prosecutors alleged that Trump asked his attorney why he could not lie and tell government officials that there were no classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
"He raised a question as to if we gave them additional documents now, would they, would they, the Department of Justice, come back and say well, why did you withhold them and try to use that as a basis for criminal liability or to make him look bad in the press," Corcoran wrote in his notes, according to ABC News.
"Well, look, isn't it better if there are no documents?" Trump told his attorney, the outlet reported.
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The conversations between Trump and his former attorney are repeatedly cited in the prosecution's indictment.
DOJ'S MOUNTAIN OF EVIDENCE
Trump and Corcoran spoke in May 2022, three months before the Mar-a-Lago raid, after federal prosecutors subpoenaed the former president to turn over any classified records he had.
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The notes also document how Corcoran conducted a personal search of Mar-a-Lago's storage room to comply with the subpoena and recover any classified records, The New York Times reported.
Corcoran previously told a grand jury in May 2022 that employees at the beach club directed him to the storage unit, telling him everything he was searching for could be found there.
The attorney then handed over more than three dozen documents that turned up to the Justice Department and wrote a letter saying that no other records were found after a thorough search.
However, three months later, the Justice Department conducted its own search and uncovered nearly 100 additional documents scattered across the estate's grounds.
The Trump campaign has accused the Justice Department of illegally leaking material, citing attorney-client privilege.
"The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest and most fundamental principles in our legal system," a Trump spokesperson told The New York Times.
'UNCONSTITUTIONAL RAID'
Meanwhile, Judge Cannon denied a separate motion from Trump's defense, claiming the DOJ submitted false or misleading information in a warrant application on Trump's Palm Beach estate.
In one instance, they argued that the application should have noted that a senior FBI official proposed seeking the consent of Trump's lawyers to search the property rather than obtaining a court-authorized warrant.
"Even accepting those statements by the high-level FBI official, the Motion offers an insufficient basis to believe that inclusion in the affidavit of that official's perspective (or if the dissenting views of other FBI agents as referenced generally in his testimony) would have altered the evidentiary calculus in support of probable cause for the alleged offenses," Cannon wrote in her ruling.
In their arguments, the defense also claimed the federal search warrant on the beach club violated the Constitution because it gave agents excessive authorization to comb the property for evidence.
Trump falsely claimed in a campaign email that the FBI was "locked and loaded" to "take him out" during the August 2022 raid.
"Joe Biden's DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE," Trump said in a campaign email in May.
"They were authorized to shoot me!" the presumptive Republican presidential candidate added.
"You know they're just itching to do the unthinkable... Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger."
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 40 federal counts of knowingly and willfully retaining classified documents after leaving the White House at the end of his term.
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Federal prosecutors alleged that Trump obstructed the government's attempts to retrieve the classified documents.
Rather than comply with the government's efforts, Trump hid the classified records, including 17 top-secret documents, in his estate, prospectors allege.