Former President, Donald Trump suffered a pair of legal setbacks on Thursday as Judges spurned his calls to dismiss criminal charges in an effort to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia and keeping classified records after leaving office.
Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected Trump’s argument that the case accusing him of illegally holding onto classified documents should be thrown out on the basis of his argument as they were his personal records rather than government properties.
Trump had argued that his retention of highly sensitive documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office in 2021 was authorized under a U.S. law that allows former Presidents keep personal records unrelated to their official responsibilities.
Separately, one of the Republican presidential candidate’s allies, former Justice Department official attorney Jeffrey Clark, face the risk of disbarment after a Washington panel found that he violated some attorney ethic rules in his attempts to enlist the agency to help overturn Trump’s loss.
Those cases represent just some of the legal entanglements facing Trump, who has been criminally charged of four cases as he challenges President Joe Biden in the November 5 election.
The first-ever trial of a sitting or former U.S. president is, however, due to get underway in New York on April 15.
“It just shows that everything’s moving forward,” said Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor in Georgia, who noted that progress in many of the cases remains slow.
Join our WhatsApp community via https://goquick.ly/cj8q2 for instant and latest news updates.