Former top Pence aide: Trump claim that presidents can declassify docs by thinking about it absurd' (September 2022)
thehill.com

... Former top Pence aide Marc Short on Friday rejected a recent claim from former President Trump that presidents can declassify documents by thinking about it, calling the notion "absurd."

"That's absurd, obviously," Short told CBS News. "I think it would make it very difficult for the intelligence community to have a classification system if that was the case."

Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Pence, added that he and the former vice president did not operate on that standard.

Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday that presidents can declassify materials simply by "thinking about it."

"There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it," Trump said. "If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, It's declassified.' Even by thinking about it." ...

Prosecutors in Trump's Classified Documents Case Sharply Rebuke Judge's Unusual and 'Flawed' Order
www.military.com

... Federal prosecutors chided the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump's classified documents case in Florida, warning her off potential jury instructions that they said rest on a "fundamentally flawed legal premise."

In an unusual order, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had asked prosecutors and defense lawyers to file proposed jury instructions for most of the charges even though it remains unclear when the case might reach trial. She asked the lawyers to respond to competing interpretations of the law that appeared to accept the Republican ex-president's argument that he was entitled under a statute known as the Presidential Records Act to retain the sensitive documents he is now charged with possessing.

The order surprised legal experts and alarmed special counsel Jack Smith's team, which said in a filing late Tuesday that that 1978 law " which requires presidents to return presidential records to the government upon leaving office but permits them to retain purely personal ones " has no relevance in a case concerning highly classified documents.

Those records, prosecutors said, were clearly not personal and there is no evidence Trump ever designated them as such. They said that the suggestion he did so was "invented" only after it became public that he had taken with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after his presidency boxes of records from the White House and that none of the witnesses they interviewed in the investigation support his argument.

"Not a single one had heard Trump say that he was designating records as personal or that, at the time he caused the transfer of boxes to Mar-a-Lago, he believed that his removal of records amounted to designating them as personal under the PRA," prosecutors wrote. "To the contrary, every witness who was asked this question had never heard such a thing."

Smith's team said that if the judge insists on citing the presidential records law in her jury instructions, she should let the lawyers know as soon as possible so they can appeal.

The filing reflects continued exasperation by prosecutors at Cannon's handling of the case. ...

Judge Denies Trump's Bid to Claim Secret Documents Were Personal
www.bnnbloomberg.ca

... A federal judge denied Donald Trump's bid to get criminal charges dropped by claiming top secret records found at his Florida home were personal, keeping the criminal case on track and dealing a blow to the former president.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday refused to dismiss the charges on grounds that Trump's possession of classified materials was covered by the Presidential Records Act, after the special counsel prosecuting the case demanded the judge explain her views on the matter before trial.

Cannon's order appeared to agree with Special Counsel Jack Smith that the charges against Trump " alleging he took highly sensitive documents from the White House after losing the 2020 election " are based on violations of the 1917 Espionage Act.

Smith on Tuesday vented frustration with the judge, after she asked both sides for jury instructions before setting a trial date, saying her understanding of key legal issues appeared to be "fundamentally flawed."

However, Cannon suggested in her order that the argument for relying on the Presidential Records Act may still be a possibility when it comes to writing up instructions for the jury to consider. The judge refused Smith's request that she explicitly say the Presidential Records Act won't come up in her instructions to the jury.

The move represents a significant development in the case because up until this point it has been unclear if Cannon might side with Trump and rule that he was allowed to declare the documents personal under the 1978 law and take them with him to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House. ...

Trump's trio of court losses
www.axios.com

... Three judges this week rejected attempts by former President Trump to toss out or further delay his criminal cases, delivering a blow to the GOP frontrunner barreling closer toward his first criminal trial. ...

Her previously proposed instructions to the jury were crazy...
storage.courtlistener.com (PDF)

... A president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such a categorization decision. ...

It is no wonder why SC Smith responded as he did.

I mean, her instructions to the jury would have effectively dismissed the whole case.