Donald Trump's Classified Documents Defense Has One Major Weakness

Donald Trump's latest attempt to defend himself over the alleged hoarding of top secret documents appears to miss the whole point of the prosecutor's case.

Speaking about the classified documents case at a rally in Derry, New Hampshire, on Monday, the former president claimed he had done nothing wrong by retaining national defense information in boxes after leaving presidential office because the "boxes were secure."

"I did nothing wrong at all," he said. "In fact, my boxes were secure, and everything was good."

However, Trump was not charged over the state in which he kept the boxes, but for keeping the boxes after the end of his time as president. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Newsweek has contacted Trump's office to comment on this story.

In June, Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including U.S. nuclear secrets and plans for U.S. military retaliation in the event of an attack, and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them. Prosecutors have said he took the documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and resisted repeated requests by federal officials to return them all.

Federal investigators had conducted a raid at his Mar-a-Lago resort and seized more than 100 classified documents in 15 boxes in August 2022.

Trump was no longer authorized to retain such documents upon leaving office, thereby creating the case for the indictment on espionage and obstruction charges.

The espionage investigation has focused on whether Trump showed off the classified materials to people in his Mar-a-Lago office, and the investigation into obstruction has focused on whether retaining the documents was deliberate when he allegedly resisted a subpoena in May 2022 demanding the return of the documents.

Earlier this month, lawyers for the former president asked a judge to postpone the classified documents trial, currently scheduled for May 20, 2024, in Florida, until after next year's presidential election. They said they had not received all the records they needed to review to prepare Trump's defense and asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a motion to push back the trial until mid-November 2024.

If the case is delayed until after the election, and Trump is elected president, it is possible he could order his attorney general to have the charges dismissed.

But prosecutors suggested Trump's team was seeking unreasonable delays in the case and said it was false to accuse them of delaying the production of evidence in the case.

Meanwhile, during the New Hampshire rally, Trump compared himself to anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013, over the four criminal indictments and civil trials he is facing.

While visiting the state, he filed for the primary, formally putting his hat in the ring for president.