Donald Trump to Take Advantage of Jack Smith's 'Failures'—Attorney

Donald Trump will use motions he is due to file in his classified-documents case to take advantage of the prosecutor's failure to force him to disclose his defense, an attorney has said.

In June 2023, Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including U.S. nuclear secrets and plans for military retaliation in the event of an attack, and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them. Prosecutors have said Trump took documents that he was no longer authorized to have after leaving the White House in January 2021 and resisted repeated requests by federal officials to return them all.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges and repeatedly denied all wrongdoing. He says it is all part of a political witch hunt aimed at destroying his status as frontrunner in the race for the GOP 2024 presidential nomination. Newsweek contacted representatives for Trump by email on Tuesday to comment on this story.

Last week, Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the case, denied Special Counsel Jack Smith's request to force the former president to disclose whether he will rely on an advice of counsel defense in the trial. This is a defence that argues innocence on the basis of relying in good faith on advice his lawyer gave him that he was entitled to keep the classified documents.

Today, Trump must file any motions that he has to compel the receipt of discovery from Smith.

One of those motions will seek an order "regarding the scope of the prosecution team," while others will request "tracking information relating to the handling of allegedly classified documents, damage assessments, and impeachment material relating to the conduct of the investigation."

Writing on her Substack blog, Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama, said these motions will provide an opportunity for Trump to object to the way Smith has handled discovery.

Vance wrote: "This is his opportunity to object to the way Smith has handled discovery and he will likely take full advantage of it—expect lots of outrage over Smith's 'failures'. When the Judge rules, and her practice seems to be brief notational 'minute orders' on the docket, we may get some sense of whether the case is still on track for May."

The trial is scheduled for May 20, but the Republican has sought to delay all his cases until after the 2024 presidential election. If Trump, the GOP frontrunner, wins the election, he can seek to drop the charges in his cases.

Judge Cannon has pushed back multiple deadlines and signaled that she would be open to revisiting the trial date during a pretrial conference set for March.

Vance added that Trump is delaying providing notice of his intent to use advice of counsel defence because, if he does, he will have to disclose communications with his attorney to the government.