A new motion by Donald Trump's legal team to get the charges against their client in the stolen Mar-a-Lago documents case dismissed over accusations of selective prosecution is doomed based upon the unique circumstances of the case.
That is the opinion of University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck in an opinion piece for MSNBC where he suggested Judge Aileen Cannon will now be put on the spot to dismiss it or come up with a rationale to agree with Trump's lawyers.
At issue is a case cited by the Trump team involving "Lee Yick, a Chinese immigrant who was convicted of operating an unlicensed laundry in late-19th-century San Francisco," who argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment was being violated.
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According to Vladeck, "And yet, in a motion filed Thursday in Florida, his lawyers argue that Yick’s case provides a precedent for throwing out the charges in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents prosecution."
As he notes, "There are two different, but equally fatal, problems with Trump’s argument. First, for better or worse, the Supreme Court has made selective prosecution claims notoriously difficult to prove. Second, Trump is just about the worst possible person to bring a selective prosecution claim — since so much of his allegedly unlawful conduct in the Mar-a-Lago case is unprecedented," before adding, "Only if the defendant could prove that the government had deliberately and intentionally singled him out from other similarly situated suspects without any good reason would such a claim succeed."
That is where the Trump dismissal claim hits a wall, he wrote.
"Trump would need to produce examples of government officials who, when specifically asked to return classified information wrongfully in their possession, not only lied about having that information but took steps to obstruct the government’s attempt to recover that information," he explained before adding that the "uniqueness" the former president's situation automatically derails that possibility.
"The reason Trump’s selective prosecution claim should fail is because of how much worse the conduct alleged in the Mar-a-Lago case is than that of the other officials his brief invokes as the relevant exemplars," Vladeck elaborated before adding, "Indeed, he’s in the position he’s in entirely because his behavior went so far beyond the limits of that of any of his predecessors."
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