US judge in Florida denies Trump's motion to dismiss classified documents case

WASHINGTON -- The US district judge in Florida overseeing the federal criminal case regarding former President Donald Trump's handling of classified documents on Thursday rejected one of his two motions to dismiss the case.

Aileen M. Cannon, a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, issued the ruling shortly after the completion of a daylong hearing on Trump's requests to dismiss the case, which Trump attended.

A "motion to dismiss charges" is a legal request made by a defendant in a criminal case to have the charges against them dismissed. If the motion is granted by the court, the charges are dropped, and the case does not proceed to trial. However, if the motion is denied, the case will continue through the legal process.

Trump's legal team argued that the majority of the charges should be dismissed based on the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law which regulates the preservation of information during and after a presidency, contending that the law prevents Trump from being prosecuted.

Trump's lawyers cited other cases where presidents were discovered to have kept classified information and also referenced Special Counsel Robert Hur's choice not to prosecute President Joe Biden for classified material he retained after his vice presidency.

Trump has also asserted that he designated the materials he removed to Mar-a-Lago as personal records while he was still in office, an argument refuted by the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has been investigating Trump.

Trump, who clinched the Republican presidential nomination earlier this week, is embroiled in four criminal cases, facing about 90 felony charges, and has recently been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in two civil cases. He denies all charges and accuses Biden and the Democratic Party of ongoing "political witch hunts" against him.