Left: Former President Donald Trump, center, talks with defense attorney Emil Bove, left, before the start of trial at Manhattan criminal court, Friday, May 3, 2024 in New York. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)/Right: Former President Bill Clinton speaks during a campaign stop for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at Keene State College in Keene, N.H. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
This week, as the weight of his criminal trial in New York bears down on him, Donald Trump’s attorneys made a play to nix his espionage indictment in Florida altogether by, among other strategies, telling U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that former President Bill Clinton “may still possess classified information” and yet no one has yet “lifted a finger” to prosecute him.
The accusation was one of many laid out in a motion to dismiss on grounds of selective prosecution.
“Former President Clinton possessed, and may still possess, tapes that obviously contain classified information,” Trump’s lawyers wrote, referencing tapes they say Bill Clinton retained and later relied on for his 2004 book, “My Life.”
Trump — who is alleged to have kept records containing nuclear secrets in his shower at his Mar-a-Lago property — alleges the way Clinton held and then used those tapes for his book is identical to his situation because “the tapes contain the type of information that the Special Counsel’s Office and the Intelligence Community have repeatedly contended are classified and sensitive, such as military operations, intelligence assessments, communications with foreign leaders, and the dates on which President Clinton was briefed on particular issue.”
The more than 100-page filing, replete with exhibits pointing a finger at an array of officials Trump has openly disdained for years, seemed to anticipate that Cannon may be left unpersuaded to dismiss: Trump’s lawyers asked the judge to set a hearing on their arguments soon.
Law&Crime takes a look at this and other developments in Trump’s cases in Florida, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and New York.
