Judge Aileen Cannon denied Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss some of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s charges in the classified documents case.
According to the judge, the motion to dismiss had pleading deficiencies. She wrote in the 14-page order that the “identified deficiencies, even if generating some arguable confusion, are either permitted by law, raise evidentiary challenges not appropriate for disposition at this juncture, and/or do not require dismissal even if technically deficient, so long as the jury is instructed appropriately and presented with adequate verdict forms as to each Defendants’ alleged conduct.”
She elaborated later in the order that while the “specific pleading format employed in Counts 34 and 36 appears somewhat unconventional and is susceptible to some confusion, the Court is ultimately satisfied that neither count requires dismissal on grounds of duplicity.”
In other words, the government’s case against Trump can hold against a motion to dismiss, although it may still be challenged in other motions.
Despite this apparent win for Smith, Cannon wrote that much of the special counsel’s Superseding Indictment’s language is “legally unnecessary.”
The judge removed a paragraph from the indictment, claiming its contents were “not appropriate.”
Trump’s legal team also filed a motion to dismiss the documents case due to the files being out of order. They wrote that by failing to preserve the original order of the files, the FBI destroyed “exculpatory evidence supporting one of the most basic defenses available to President Trump.”
According to the filing, the Filter Team “did not even try to preserve the order of the documents in each (and every) box that was targeted during the raid.”