The bravado that has served him well in the political arena is less convenient in a legal realm dominated by verifiable evidence, where judges this week misjudged his claims and where a fraud investigation that took root when Trump was still president has exploded into public view. . a 222-page state lawsuit with allegations. In politics, “you can say whatever you want and if people like it, it works. In a legal realm, it’s different,” said Chris Edelson, a scholar of presidential powers and professor of government at American University. “It’s an arena where there are tangible consequences for mistakes, misdeeds, misrepresentations in a way that doesn’t apply in politics.” This distinction between politics and law was evident in just one 30-hour period this week. Trump insisted on Fox News in an interview that aired Wednesday that the top-secret government files he had at Mar-a-Lago were in fact declassified, that a president has the power to declassify information “even if he thinks about it.” But a day earlier, an independent arbitrator appointed by his lawyers appeared confused when the Trump team refused to produce any information to support its claims that the documents had been declassified. The special counsel, Raymond Deary, a veteran federal judge, said the Trump team was trying to “have its cake and eat it too” and that, lacking information to back up the allegations, it was inclined to consider the files with way government does: Classified. On Wednesday morning, New York State Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump in a lawsuit of underpaying his net worth by billions of dollars and routinely misleading banks about the value of prized assets. The lawsuit, the culmination of a three-year investigation that began when he was president, also names three of his grown children as defendants and seeks to bar them from running a company in the state again. Trump has denied any wrongdoing. The story continues Hours later, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit — two of whom were Trump appointees — handed him a stunning loss in the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The court overwhelmingly rejected arguments that it had the right to ask the special master to do an independent review of about 100 classified documents obtained during the FBI’s investigation last month, and said it was unclear why Trump should have ” interest or need”. registrations. That ruling cleared the way for the Justice Department to continue using classified records in its investigation. It lifted a lower court judge, Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee whose Mar-a-Lago rulings have so far been the only bright spot for the former president. On Thursday, she responded by striking the parts of her order that required the Justice Department to give Deary and Trump’s lawyers access to classified records. Dearie followed through on his own order, giving the Justice Department until Sept. 26 to file an affidavit certifying that the FBI’s detailed inventory of items taken in the search is accurate. Trump’s team will have until Sept. 30 to address identity or census errors. Between Dearie’s position and the appeals court’s decision, “I think basically there may be a developing consensus, if not an already developed consensus, that the government has the stronger position on many of these issues and many of these controversies.” said Richard Serafini, a Florida criminal defense attorney and former Justice Department prosecutor. To be sure, Trump is hardly a stranger to courtroom dramas, having been deposed in numerous lawsuits during his decade-long business career and displaying a remarkable ability to survive seemingly dire situations. His lawyers did not immediately respond Thursday to a request seeking comment. At the White House, Trump faced a dangerous investigation into whether he obstructed a Justice Department investigation into possible collusion between Russia and his campaign in 2016. Ultimately, he was at least partially shielded by the power of the presidency, with special counsel Robert Mueller to invoke the department’s longstanding policy barring the indictment of a sitting president. He was twice impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives — once over a phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the second time over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill — but acquitted by the Senate both times cases thanks to political support from Republican colleagues. It remains unclear whether any of the ongoing investigations — the Mar-a-Lago probe or investigations related to interference in the Jan. 6 election or in Georgia — will lead to criminal charges. And the New York lawsuit is a civil case. But there is no doubt that Trump no longer enjoys the legal shield of the presidency, even though he has repeatedly relied on an expansive view of executive power to defend keeping records the government says are not his, regardless of their classification. Notably, the Justice Department and federal appeals court have given little weight to his claims that the records were declassified. For all his claims on television and social media, both noted that Trump has presented no information to support the idea that he took steps to declassify the records. The appeals court called the declassification question a “red herring” because even declassifying a record would not change its contents or turn it from a government document to a personal one. And the statutes cited by the Justice Department as the basis of its investigation do not specifically mention classified information. Trump’s lawyers also stopped short of saying in court, or in legal documents, that the records were declassified. They told Dearie that they shouldn’t be forced to reveal their position on the matter now because it could be part of their defense if indicted. Even some legal experts who have otherwise sided with Trump in his legal battles are skeptical of his claims. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who testified as a Republican witness in the first impeachment trial in 2019, said he was struck by the former president’s “lack of coherent and consistent position on the classified documents.” “It’s not clear,” he added, “what Jedi-like lawyers said that you could declassify things with a thought, but the courts are unlikely to accept that claim.”
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