Lawyers working for special counsel Jack Smith said Trump’s reading of the PRA is wrong and relies on the faulty view that “as a former president, the Nation’s laws and principles of accountability that govern every other citizen do not apply to him.”
The materials Trump allegedly took from the White House are “indisputably presidential, not personal,” prosecutors wrote, adding that even if Trump did designate the material as personal, the PRA would still not apply to classified information found at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club.
“Nothing in the PRA leaves it to a President to make unilateral, unreviewable, and perpetually binding decisions to remove presidential records from the White House in a manner that thwarts the operation of the PRA — a statute designed to ensure that presidential records are the property of the United States and that they are preserved for the people,” the 29-page filing reads.
Smith’s team also decisively rejected Trump’s claim that the involvement of the Archives in the initial effort to retrieve the presidential records means the Justice Department cannot bring criminal charges. Trump is not criminally charged with violating the PRA, and prosecutors said that “nothing in that civil remedy precludes the application of criminal laws that govern overlapping conduct.”
