Trump in Florida federal court today as his lawyers argue a motion to dismiss the first 32 counts of Florida....basically every charge about retaining documents.
The main thing to discuss is the Presidential Records Act.
Trump's lawyers boldly argued that the PRA gave Trump “virtually unreviewable Article II executive authority to designate the records as personal when, as alleged in the Superseding Indictment, he ’caused’ the materials to be transported out of the White House while he was still in office.”
Smith has countered by saying Trump simply had no such unilateral authority under the PRA.
But Charge 19 deals with Q clearance.
In their February motion to dismiss on grounds of unconstitutional vagueness, Trump lawyers argued the nineteenth willful retention of national defense information count, relating to an “Undated document concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States,” could not stand. They said the special counsel handed them Department of Energy records “indicating that President Trump maintained the ‘Q’ clearance that is relevant to the document charged.”
In his opposition, Smith called the “Q clearance” argument meritless because discovery actually shows the “Q clearance” went away “as a matter of law” when Joe Biden was inaugurated as president.
This is awesome, especially good to share with those "Q clearance is fake" types.
I had a Q clearance when I worked at the NRC. It is not fake. It is also not a magical "the highest" clearance any more than the Top Secret clearance - they are equivalent. One is DoD and one is DoE. In fact the DoD is faster at getting you cleared so many times the DoE will put you in for a DoD Top Secret and then grant you a Q once you receive the TS. They did that for me.
Also - I don't understand what his lawyers were trying to do. Having any clearance doesn't mean you can have classified at home. They tried to argue that he was cleared so it is ok. No - that is illegal. If they instead argued that he declassified it, or was authorized under the PRA then that would be different. The argument that he had a clearance was a crappy argument. I don't know what their angle was, but if they didn't understand that their argument was completely false then Trump needs FAR better lawyers.
Charleton Heston had Q clearance. The military wikis talk about Q clearance.
GSA and FBI had visited Mar-A-Lago. If they determined that the room where the records were stored met SCIF guidelines of DCID 6/9 - cameras, security response time, locks, walls, dielectric decouplings, etc. - then he would be allowed to retain classified. And the rules may be different for former presidents.
Agreed, but that wasn't what the lawyers used in their 2 motions. The only reason I can see them using those 2 motions is if they needed to stall while waiting on something else. They were always destined to fail and the lawyers had to know that.