Deep in a report on the roadblocks the Department of Justice will face prosecuting Donald Trump for violations of the Espionage Act, the lead prosecutor who sent former NSA translator Reality Winner to prison for unauthorized release of government information pointed the way to expediting the former president's trial.
According to a report from the Washington Post, trials involving top secret documents face a massive amount of hurdles because of potential exposure of what is contained in the documents at the center of the indictment.
With Trump facing a 37-count indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith, the Post's Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein wrote, "Trump’s indictment on dozens of charges, including mishandling classified documents and trying to obstruct investigators’ efforts to recover that material, means his case will be tried under the rules of the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA — a law that could, in theory, delay any trial until after the 2024 presidential election," before adding, "If Trump, who is a candidate in that election and leading in Republican polls, were to win, he might try to direct the Justice Department to drop the case against him."
According to former DOJ prosecutor David Aaron who specialized in national security cases, there are ways to get around some of the roadblocks.
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"They want the document on its own to be a blinking red light that says it should obviously not have been removed,” he explained. “There’s an effort for prosecutors to identify documents that would be useful as evidence and also wouldn’t require a ton of technical explanation to the jury. They need them to be sensitive, but not too sensitive.”
Aaron added that the start of the discovery process should focus on "nonclassified aspects of the evidence" while Trump's lawyers await government approval to be allowed access to highly sensitive documents they need to review.
“The documents themselves are classified, but evidence such as the discussions about where they were moved, or the search warrant affidavits, are likely unclassified,” he explained. “You cannot defend an entire case without a security clearance, but you can make progress in the case without one.”
Aaron pointed out the unusual and historic aspects of the case where a former president is on trial under the Espionage Act, but remarked that the law is clear no matter who is under indictment.
“This is a unique circumstance, this is a unique case, but all the things that we are talking about — the Espionage Act and CIPA — these are all well-established techniques and laws. This is how the law operates. These are not being made up on the fly,” he asserted.
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