‘Intolerable’: Trump pleads with Mar-a-Lago judge to toss case because Dr. Deborah Birx wasn’t prosecuted for her ‘boxes’ of docs – By Matt Naham (Law & Crime) / May 2, 2024
Attorneys for Donald Trump asked the Mar-a-Lago judge to throw out his indictment, arguing that he is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act unlike several similarly situated others, including Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House COVID-19 pandemic response coordinator remembered for squirming in a chair upon hearing the then president suggest at a press conference that a disinfectant “injection” could help treat coronavirus.
The defense began its argument Thursday by appealing to “American history” that is “chock full of public examples involving alleged mishandling of classified information and documents” without Espionage Act and obstruction prosecutions resulting, before naming President Joe Biden, Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, former President Bill Clinton, former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, General David Petraeus, and Birx.
Trump, charged with willful retention of national defense information and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct the FBI and a grand jury from recovering classified documents that his co-defendants allegedly tried to conceal at his direction by moving numerous “boxes” around and scheming to delete video footage, maintains that special counsel Jack Smith’s case cannot survive in light of the aforementioned non-prosecution examples.
