Donald Trump's lawyers revealed their defense strategy to U.S. District judge Aileen Cannon in a private meeting.
The former president attended a court hearing Monday morning in Fort Pierce, Florida, where he and his attorneys met with the judge for a closed-door hearing to discuss their trial strategy and other topics outside the presence of prosecutors, who will meet with Cannon afterward, reported The Guardian.
Trump's attorneys presented their defense theory, which holds that classified documents he was charged with illegally retaining were not actually "national defense information" or "closely held" by the time he left office, as defined in the Espionage Act, and they asked Cannon to limit the redactions or substitutions to those documents sought by prosecutors.
"For instance: the Bedminster [document], understood to be a military map of Afghanistan, would have been out of date by the time he was waving it around in summer 2021," Lowell reported. "Trump legal wants a [document] like that unredacted so they can argue it was all old [intelligence]."
READ MORE: 11 ways Trump doesn’t become president
Trump's team insisted they need as many of the classified documents as possible to be left unredacted so they can make that argument at trial, sources said.
If Cannon allows fewer redactions than requested by prosecutors or allows the former president's team to access prosecution motions explaining the national security reasons behind each redaction or substitution, special counsel Jack Smith's team can appeal those rulings to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
