Left: Aileen M. Cannon speaks remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (U.S. Senate); Right: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump visits a Chick-fil-A, April 10, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jason Allen)
The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents case issued a rare denial to a man seeking to file a pretrial brief as a would-be amicus curiae, or friend of the court.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been mostly permissive when it comes to pretrial briefs, including friend of court briefs, in the case — only denying one other prior attempt in early March from a man serving a lengthy federal prison sentence for mail and wire fraud.
On Tuesday, the court declined to allow another such nonparty filing. The rejected brief was submitted by Darryl B. Phillips, a pro se litigant who describes himself as “a private citizen and retired Electrical Engineer” with “experience analyzing complex systems, software and semiconductors” and the author of “many technical reports.”
“Amici’s interest in this case arises from observations as a donor in the 1980s to a charity providing humanitarian aid to brutally repressed minorities in Soviet Russia,” the brief reads. “Tyrannical repression was implemented through various means that included weaponization of the criminal justice system. Amici is concerned about trends towards similar tyranny in the United States and fears for the future.”
Phillips, who hails from a small town in northern California, offers a media critique by way of an explanation about the series of events that led him to filing a brief in the 45th president’s case.
“This amicus brief is written after accepting a challenge to read the indictment, applying engineering critical thinking skills to analysis of the indictment, finding many serious flaws in it, writing a report on those flaws, and noting no competent discussion of those flaws in the press or public,” Phillips’ filing goes on.
The heart of the barred brief is an exploration of the Presidential Records Act. The author argues Cannon incorrectly denied dismissal on that defense — but says both Trump’s defense attorneys and special counsel Jack Smith “failed in their understanding and presentation of the law as it relates to the facts of the case.”
As for the facts themselves, Phillips’ understanding of the details at issue more or less tracks with how the defense sees things and will likely argue them in court: Trump had something not entirely unlike plenary power to de-classify and retain the documents in question.
After citing part of the superseding indictment that stakes out the government’s basic timeline of how the documents scarpered off as “Trump ceased to be President” and “departed the White House,” the brief says Smith made a basic error that rises to a “knowing lie.”
“This root allegation of unauthorized possession is false,” Phillips says. “It argues a false chronology. President Donald Trump had the boxes moved before 12:00PM on January 20, 2021 while he had Article II Sections 1&2 powers to both authorize possession and waive executive order derived classification regulations regarding the documents.”
While the legal theories advanced by Phillips are unlikely to be considered (unless, perhaps, they are later adopted by Trump’s defense attorneys), the substantially similar idea that a U.S. president “has absolute authority over presidential papers” also undergirds an amicus brief filed in the case that was allowed by Cannon.
As Law&Crime previously reported, a group fronted by former Trump White House senior policy advisor and family separation architect Stephen Miller filed a proposed amicus brief on March 1. That group, the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) claims it has “expertise” on both the PRA and the National Archives (NARA). Miller, who is not a lawyer, had his organization’s proclaimed expertise on those issues criticized by legal experts who focus on such laws — one attorney told Law&Crime that trying to respond to the group’s claims would be “akin to arguing with someone in 2024 that the world is not flat or engage in debate over whether the moon is made of cheese.”
Still, the judge overseeing the case allowed the former Trump speechwriter to have his say about the issues.
“The Court has reviewed the motions and finds that the proposed amici bring to the Court’s attention relevant matter that may be of considerable help to the Court in resolving the cited pretrial motions,” Cannon wrote in early March. “The amicus briefs are accepted for Court consideration.”
Later, Smith pilloried the AFL’s arguments about the PRA and NARA, calling them “unsupported and untenable” in reality.
Lacking a political pedigree that would allow his non-expert opinion into the case, Phillips’ journey from accomplished EE to potential amicus curiae is much shorter. His brief notes: “Patience from the Court is requested regarding deadlines as the ability to file an amicus brief pro se as a private citizen was only learned about on 4/4/2024.”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
