I’ve mentioned before my one experience defending a criminal case.* The client was a convicted felon who was pulled over (IIRC; this was over 30 years ago) for a traffic violation (speeding?). The police found a shotgun in the package tray. He was arrested and charged in federal court with illegal possession of a firearm. We had no defense for him. We entered a guilty plea even as he protested he wasn’t in “possession” of the hunt, because it wasn’t his. I don’t think the car was his, either. He’d borrowed it from a friend. The gun belonged to a friend; that’s why he thought he wasn’t guilty. He didn’t own the gun, so he didn’t “possess” it.
Except the law defined that the crime on the basis (again, if I remember the statute correctly), “possession, custody, or control.” I remember researching the legal definitions of those words. Not in Black’s, but in the case law. The facts of our case almost perfectly fit the definitions of both “custody” and “control.” He was the only person in the car, so he had custody of the shotgun, and control of it, even though it wasn’t within arm’s reach.
He never understood that. He left the courtroom after the judge pronounced him guilty (it was a 10 minute bench trial), insisting he was innocent. He couldn’t understand why no one else saw it that way.
Trump is doing the same thing. He will, unless he has a better defense than this, suffer the same fate. There are 37 counts against him. All it takes is one.
He’s repeating what Tom Fitton has told him. He’s going to be disappointed (at least) when his lawyers refuse to raise this “defense” in court. He’s going to go to jail insisting he had a right to take the documents.
He’ll never understand how wrong he is.
It does seem like a minimal qualification.
*The DOJ will preclude this defense pre-trial. If Cannon won’t bar it, the DOJ will be able to appeal the ruling. For that reason I don’t think Cannon would allow it.
