Donald Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday night previewed their defense arguments in the case over the former president's handling of classified documents, saying they plan to rebut prosecutors’ accusations that sensitive government documents were stored at insecure locations on his Mar-a-Lago estate.
In a motion filed Tuesday, Trump lawyers signaled they will argue that prosecutors carried out a “politically motivated and biased” investigation into his handling of classified documents, with the intent to damage the former president’s 2024 campaign.
Trump’s lawyers said they are seeking communications between prosecutors at the Justice Department and associates of President Joe Biden, alleging without providing evidence that the Biden administration is orchestrating legal efforts to interfere with Trump's campaign.
“The Special Counsel’s Office has disregarded basic discovery obligations and DOJ policies in an effort to support the Biden Administration’s egregious efforts to weaponize the criminal justice system in pursuit of an objective that President Biden cannot achieve on the campaign trail: slowing down President Trump’s leading campaign in the 2024 presidential election,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
They also point to Trump’s decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses this week in arguing that the charges against him in the case show “partisan election interference."
“The patent absurdity of the Office’s efforts is illustrated by the fact that, while working toward a historic landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses yesterday, President Trump was also preparing to bring to Your Honor’s attention today the record of misrepresentations and discovery violations that have marred this case from the outset and illustrate that the Office has disregarded fundamental fairness and its legal obligations in favor of partisan election interference,” they wrote.
The special counsel's office declined to provide comment when reached by NBC News.
Trump in June 2022 was accused of breaking several laws and charged with dozens of felony counts in connection to the more than 100 classified documents federal agents obtained from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 2022. The charges include 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and single counts of false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation and a scheme to conceal.
Trump was hit with additional charges in a superseding indictment in July 2022, alleging that he was involved in a scheme to delete security video in Mar-a-Lago.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and claimed he is being unfairly targeted by the Biden administration. The former president and his associates Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who also were accused of crimes in the case, have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
