Special counsel sharply rebukes Cannon's jury instruction order in Trump case

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : "You heard evidence during the trial that President Trump exercised that authority, at times verbally and at times without using formal procedures, while he was President," Trump's legal team wrote in the hypothetical jury instructions.
45% : Tuesday night's filing urged Cannon to rule quickly on whether the Presidential Records Act is relevant to the case, so that prosecutors can appeal any such determination to a higher court before the Florida trial, which is delayed from its original late May start date but has not yet been rescheduled.Smith, who like many legal scholars has said the records act has nothing to do with the national security crimes Trump is accused of committing, warned that waiting until the trial is underway to rule on the issue could doom the prosecution case before it ever gets to a jury.
42% : It sets up the possibility that a government appeal of such a ruling could delay the trial well beyond November's presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.
41% : "The PRA's distinction between personal and presidential records has no bearing on whether a former President's possession of documents containing national defense information is authorized under the Espionage Act, and the PRA should play no role in the jury instructions," Smith wrote.
40% : In the meantime, Trump is scheduled to stand trial starting April 15 in a New York state case accusing him of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment during the 2016 election.
40% : The government has said it is the Espionage Act -- not the PRA -- that guards classified materials.
38% : It argued that the Espionage Act, which has been used for decades to convict others of improperly possessing classified documents, was too vaguely worded to be used in his indictment.
36% : One of those motions said the case should be dismissed because the PRA meant that Trump could simply declare highly classified documents to be his personal property and keep them at Mar-a-Lago.
33% : Legal experts said she could use those instructions to help inform her eventual ruling on a request that Trump made to dismiss the case because the PRA allowed him to designate any presidential record as personal.
29% : Trump is not charged with violating the PRA, and prosecutors said throughout their filing that the PRA should not be in those instructions.
22% : "Trump has pleaded not guilty to 32 charges of violating the Espionage Act, with each count corresponding to a specific classified document that he is alleged to have retained after leaving office, as well as eight additional charges of obstructing government efforts to retrieve the materials.
21% : She then said they should also write separate jury instructions predicated on the idea that jurists would be able to determine which of the documents Trump is accused of illegally retaining are personal and which are presidential.
11% : In response, Smith said Cannon was pursuing a "fundamentally flawed legal premise" that the law somehow overrides Section 793 of the Espionage Act, which Trump is accused of violating by stashing hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club, after his presidency ended.

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