Court papers filed by his lawyers, formally a request for discovery evidence, sounded at times more like political talking points.
Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers filed on Tuesday night that they intended to place accusations that the intelligence community was biased against Mr. Trump at the heart of their defense against charges accusing him of illegally holding onto dozens of highly sensitive classified documents after he left office.
The lawyers also indicated that they were planning to defend Mr. Trump by seeking to prove that the investigation of the case was “politically motivated and biased.”
The court papers, filed in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., gave the clearest picture yet of the scorched earth legal strategy that Mr. Trump is apparently planning to use in fighting the classified documents indictment handed up over the summer.
While the 68-page filing was formally a request by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to provide them with reams of additional information that they believe can help them fight the charges, it often read more like a list of political talking points than a brief of legal arguments.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While the 68-page filing was formally a request by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to provide them with reams of additional information that they believe can help them fight the charges, it often read more like a list of political talking points than a brief of legal arguments.
The nation’s spy services took center stage in the papers, given that intelligence officials are likely to testify at trial about what Mr. Trump’s lawyers called their “subjective assessments” of the more than 30 classified documents that the former president is accused of removing from the White House.
Mr. Blanche and Mr. Kise said they planned to use “evidence relating to analytic bias harbored by the intelligence community” to undermine the prosecution’s contention that the documents Mr. Trump took with him were connected to issues of national defense.
The filing additionally asked for information about one of Mr. Smith’s chief deputies, Thomas P. Windom, who has taken the lead in prosecuting the other federal case that Mr. Trump is facing — one in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The filing on Tuesday night was similar in tone and substance to a discovery request that Mr. Trump’s lawyers made in November in the election interference case, which is unfolding in Federal District Court in Washington.
They also indicated that they intended to raise a host of distractions as part of their defense, saying they wanted to drag unrelated matters like the criminal prosecution of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter into the case.
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