Leo Terrell: Trump team should file this 'game over' motion
Civil rights attorney Leo Terrell sounds off on 'Life, Liberty & Levin' after host invokes Clinton socks case.
Civil rights attorney Leo Terrell said on "Life, Liberty & Levin" that former President Donald Trump's counsel in the Mar-a-Lago raid case could file a single motion that could be "game over" for special counsel Jack Smith and the prosecution.
Terrell was asked his thoughts on the Presidential Records Act in response to former President Richard Nixon's behavior upon his resignation.
The act governs how presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan, must handle their official records and documentation, and a 2014 revision spearheaded by then-Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., made digital-age and transparency-related tweaks to it.
The PRA places the responsibility for "custody and management of incumbent Presidential records with the President," according to the National Archives.
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Trump (SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP Getty)
Host Mark Levin said Trump's team may consider citing Democrat-appointed jurists like Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who ruled against transparency watchdog Judicial Watch in a 2010 case seeking cassettes former President Bill Clinton stored in his sock drawer.
Those tapes included considerations on whether to fire former CIA Director James Woolsey, reasoning behind foreign policy decisions surrounding U.S. involvement in Haiti, and a conversation with then-Rep. William Natcher, D-Ky., about why Clinton chose to enter America into NAFTA.
"Game over," Terrell replied. "That is, to me, the most important first motion President Trump's legal team could file."
The PRA exonerates Trump, Terrell said, adding that such a filing could leave the prosecution without a viable response.
"President Trump had the absolute right to declassify any and all documents in his custody, control and possession. There has been no response to that by the prosecution. I'll tell you why: Because they don't have one."
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Terrell said the feds' supposed blind spot for the PRA is a result of its alleged mission to quash Trump's presidential aspirations.
"The leading Republican candidate, in my opinion, the next president of this country, is trying to be derailed by the prosecution, by Joe Biden, by Merrick Garland, by Christopher Wray and the Democratic machine… and the left-wing media."
Terrell said the press and Democrats cannot beat Trump at the polls so they have to use the legal system as proxy.
Invoking the PRA, Terrell claimed, should lead to an "outright dismissal of these frivolous charges against Donald J. Trump."
In addition to Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and President Biden have been subject to scrutiny involving classified documents found in their possession or domiciles.
In Pence's case, he fully cooperated and went uncharged. In Biden's case, former Baltimore federal prosecutor Rob Hur was tapped as special counsel but has made scant public comment to-date on his case.
Documents with a timeline stretching back to Biden's time in the Senate have been found at several locations, including a University of Pennsylvania-linked building in the District of Columbia, and in a garage used to store the president's Corvette at his Greenville, Del., estate.