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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
WEST PALM BEACH DIVISION
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
vs.
Case No. 23-80101-CR
CANNON/REINHART
DONALD J. TRUMP,
WALTINE NAUTA, and
CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA,
Defendants.
_____________________________________
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S REPLY BRIEF IN FURTHER SUPPORT OF
MOTION TO DISMISS COUNTS 1–32 BASED ON
UNCONSTITUTIONAL VAGUENESSPage 2 Case 9:23-cr-80101-AMC Document 398 Entered on FLSD Docket 03/13/2024 Page 2 of
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................
DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................................
I.
No Amount Of “Judicial Gloss” Can Save § 793(e) As Applied To President Trump .. A.
The Prosecution Ignores The Rule Of Lenity And Legislative History .........................
B.
The Authorization Clause Is Indeterminate On These Facts ..........................................
C.
The Court Should Reject Further Judicial Expansion Of The NDI Clause ....................
D. The “Closely Held” Requirement Does Not Address President Trump’s As-Applied
Challenges ........................................................................................................................
II.
E.
The Entitlement Clause Is Not Limited To The “Classification System” ......................
F.
The “Actual Notice” Arguments Are Inapposite ............................................................
G.
Kolender Supports President Trump’s Motion ...............................................................
H.
Mens Rea Does Not Cure All Vagueness Ills ................................................................. Count 19 Should Be Dismissed ....................................................................................
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................
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INTRODUCTION
President Donald J. Trump respectfully submits this reply in further support of his motion
to dismiss Counts 1–32 of the Superseding Indictment based on the vagueness doctrine and
President Trump’s “Q” clearance (the “Motion”), and in response to the opposition brief by the
Special Counsel’s Office, ECF No. 377 (the “Opposition”).
The Special Counsel’s Office starts out with the baseless and untenable claim that the
“statute’s prohibitions are clear.” Oppn. at 1. Perhaps what the Office meant—and this would be
closer to the truth—is that courts facing inapposite factual circumstances have tried to make
§ 793(e) clearer through “explicat[ions]” and “many judicial decisions” that have broadened the
statute’s scope beyond the plain meaning of the text Congress chose. Oppn. at 2, 7. However, the
Court will be writing on what is essentially a blank slate in the Eleventh Circuit, against the
backdrop of the Supreme Court’s recent retrenchment on using “judicial gloss” to save statutes
that Congress should have written more clearly, and in the context of a former President of the
United States who relied on Article II power, Presidential Records Act discretion, executive
privilege, and presidential immunity. Section 793(e) is unconstitutionally vague as applied to
President Trump in each of Counts 1–32, and Count 19 fails to state a claim.
DISCUSSION
I.
No Amount Of “Judicial Gloss” Can Save § 793(e) As Applied To President Trump
A. The Prosecution Ignores The Rule Of Lenity And Legislative History
The Special Counsel’s Office concedes that § 793(e) is vague enough to require recourse
to judicial “gloss” applied to a different statute by the Supreme Court more than 80 years ago in
Gorin, but does not mention the Rule of Lenity—the “junior version of the vagueness doctrine,”
United States v. Caldwell, 655 F. App’x 730, 732 (11th Cir. 2016)—even once. See Mot. at 1, 10-
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11. The omission is telling because lenity is one of the driving forces behind the Supreme Court’s
decisions in Davis and Johnson, which are two of the three recent residual-clause decisions that
counsel strongly against continued judicial rewriting of congressional enactments.
The Special Counsel’s Office also fails to address the complex and confusing legislative
history of § 793(e). See Mot. at 4-5. Particularly after the recent residual-clause cases, it is
significant that the record “raises serious doubts as to whether Congress had even a vague
understanding” of the 1917 predecessor to § 793(e), and “virtually no understanding” of the
language of § 793(e) itself. See id. at 5 (cleaned up). Given that history, judicial efforts to achieve
a statutory interpretation that legislators in Congress did not agree upon are particularly fraught
and, as applied to President Trump, incapable of avoiding constitutional infirmities. No Eleventh
Circuit case requires that course, and the Court must not take it.
B. The Authorization Clause Is Indeterminate On These Facts
The term “unauthorized” did not provide fair notice to President Trump, and the Special
Counsel’s Office is applying the Authorization Clause in the type of arbitrary manner that the
vagueness doctrine is intended to protect against.
The Special Counsel’s Office wholly mischaracterized the only Espionage Act case they
cite in defense of the Authorization Clause, United States v. Ford, 288 F. App’x 54 (4th Cir. 2008).
Oppn. at 8. In reality, Ford quoted Morison, where the Fourth Circuit reasoned that § 793(e) is
“definite and clear” as applied to the argument in that case that the statute was limited to “classical
spying.” 844 F.2d 1057, 1063-64 (4th Cir. 1988). That is not the issue here. In Ford, the Fourth
Circuit concluded that § 793(e) was “definite and clear” with respect to the argument that the
statute “does not criminalize retention.” 288 F. App’x at 56-57. Because the text of § 793(e)
expressly prohibits retention, the clarity that the Ford panel perceived is irrelevant to this motion.
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The contentions that follow the mischaracterization of Ford fare no better. The Special
Counsel’s Office tried to cobble together dictionary definitions to assert that “unauthorized” means
“without official approval or permission.” Oppn. at 8 (emphasis added). The inclusion of the term
“official” is a self-serving leap not supported by the only case they cite, Nosal. There, the Ninth
Circuit interpreted “without authorization” to mean “without permission,” which is a definition
that includes lack of permission from the private party whose property is at issue. 844 F.3d 1024,
1028 (9th Cir. 2016). However, the Office forced the word “official” into their made-up definition
to try to use as a hook for invoking the National Security Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3161(a), which is not
referenced in the Espionage Act, and Executive Order 13526, which has no textual basis in
§ 793(e) either. Oppn. at 9. In an effort to cover these gaps, the Office cites Department of Navy
v. Egan. See Oppn. at 18. However, Egan concerned the impropriety of judicial review of
Executive Branch security-clearance decisions, and the Court relied in part on the Civil Service
Reform Act of 1978. 484 U.S. 518, 520 (1988). Egan does not support the Office’s argument that
national security power derived from Article II serves as a basis for relying on Executive Order
13526 to interpret a statute that makes no reference to Executive Branch input. All the stretching
and straining by the Office—from dictionaries, to Nosal, to the National Security Act, to Executive
Order 13526, to Egan—proves the point: upholding § 793(e) over President Trump’s individual
as-applied vagueness challenges to Counts 1–32 would require putting words in Congress’s mouth.
That approach is no longer viable after Davis, Dimaya, and Johnson. See Mot. at 3, 6.
The cobbled-together attempt by the Special Counsel’s Office fails as applied to President
Trump.
As the Court already observed, President Trump was “once the country’s chief
classification authority.” ECF No. 346 at 7. He occupied that role as to each of the documents at
issue in Counts 1–32. The provision of the National Security Act cited by the Special Counsel’s
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Office, 50 U.S.C. § 3161(a), does not authorize regulations binding Presidents or private parties.
See 50 U.S.C. § 3163. As explained in our submissions relating to the Presidential Records Act,
President Trump’s retention of the documents was not “unauthorized” under § 793(e), because he
designated them as personal records pursuant to the PRA during his first term in Office.
Pursuant to § 6.1(hh), Executive Order 13526 does not apply to “records” that are personal
rather than “Presidential.” Thus, insofar as Executive Order 13526 applies “equally to former
Presidents,” Trump v. United States, 2022 WL 4366684, at *8 (11th Cir. 2022), it does not apply
at all to their personal records—which is exactly how DOJ and NARA treated personal records
retained by, for example, President Clinton and President Reagan. Finally, the executive privilege,
which is fully enforceable in the post-presidential timeframe, and presidential immunity, which
President Trump had every reason to believe applied for the reasons set forth in our motion to
dismiss based on that doctrine, made the concept of “unauthorized” possession even more vague
with respect to President Trump. For all of these reasons, the Authorization Clause fails to provide
fair notice and lacks adequate enforcement criteria.
C. The Court Should Reject Further Judicial Expansion Of The NDI Clause
The “judicial interpretations” identified by the Special Counsel’s Office do not, in fact,
“narrow and clarify the text” of the NDI Clause.
Oppn. at 12.
Instead, these decisions
impermissibly increased the scope of the statute in a manner that cannot be condoned. Gorin
characterized “national defense” as a “generic concept of broad connotations” and asserted that
the phrase includes materials “related [to] activities of national preparedness,” which itself is a
nearly limitless phrase. 312 U.S. 19, 27-29 (1941). In Hitselberger, the court acknowledged that
it “might be true” that the “judicial gloss” from Gorin had caused the NDI Clause to capture
“innocuous information of alarming breadth.” 991 F. Supp. 2d 101, 105 (D.D.C. 2013). That
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seems to have been the case in Rosen, where the court suggested that the NDI Clause reaches
“matters relating to United States foreign policy and intelligence capabilities” that have nothing to
do with the statutory term, “national defense.” 445 F. Supp. 2d 602, 620 (E.D. Va. 2006)
(emphasis added). Perhaps the judge in Rosen felt obligated to follow the Fourth Circuit’s decision
in Morison, where the panel seemed to consider the phrases “national defense materials,” “secret
defense information,” and “national interest materials” to be synonymous. 844 F.2d at 1065. That
is plainly wrong as a matter of statutory text. So too was the Morison panel’s assertion that “all
vagueness may be corrected by judicial construction which narrows the sweep of the statute within
the range of reasonable certainty.” Compare id. at 1071, with United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct.
2319, 2323 (2019) (“In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all.”). For these reasons,
the Court should not follow the out-of-Circuit judicial extensions of the NDI Clause.
D. The “Closely Held” Requirement Does Not Address President Trump’s As-Applied
Challenges
The only arguably restrictive interpretation of the NDI Clause that courts have applied is
the “closely held” requirement—which is a judicial invention with no textual basis. The Gorin
Court created this requirement out of whole cloth in order to address a First Amendment issue: the
phrase “national defense information” is so broad that it arguably covers newspaper articles about
war efforts and related conversations in the public square. While the “closely held” requirement
has relevance to the ongoing discovery violations by the Special Counsel’s Office, as discussed in
Classified Supplements, it does not fully address the vagueness of the NDI Clause as applied to
President Trump.
The position of the Office seems to be that, if a document is presented to a President, then
the document contains “national defense information.” See Oppn. at 20 (arguing that it is an
“obvious fact” that documents “presented to the sitting Commander in Chief . . . contained
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national-security information that the Government keeps closely held”). No intelligible principle
could be articulated to explain why, for example, certain documents relating to the President’s
Daily Brief (“PBD”) are charged in the Superseding Indictment, while at the same time the CIA’s
website includes John Helgerson’s book describing specific PDB topics on specific days during
President Trump’s first term. 1 The Office’s “presentation” argument only further illustrates the
unconstitutional ambiguity that has been read into the statute and the failure of the NDI Clause to
provide enforcement criteria.
E. The Entitlement Clause Is Not Limited To The “Classification System”
Having argued repeatedly, and correctly, that § 793(e) is not limited to classified
information, e.g., ECF No. 373 at 4-5, the Special Counsel’s Office nevertheless tries
unsuccessfully to defend the Entitlement Clause on the basis that it is governed by the
“classification system” of Executive Order 13526. Oppn. at 14-15. The argument has no more
merit for the Entitlement Clause than it does for the Authorization Clause. There is no textual
basis for that leap in the Espionage Act, and no Eleventh Circuit case requires it.
The Special Counsel’s Office seizes on Rosen and cases relying on it. See Oppn. at 14-15.
In Rosen, the court interpreted the phrase “not entitled to receive,” which parallels the
Authorization Clause of § 793(e) rather than the Entitlement Clause.
The argument that
Executive Order 13526 “restricts access” to classified information says nothing about who is
“entitled to receive” records that President Trump designated as personal under the PRA.
See JOHN HELGERSON, GETTING TO KNOW THE PRESIDENT 263 (disclosing that President Trump
“seemed particularly interested in three pieces in the PDB,” including “manpower available to the
ISIS terrorist group” and “oil prices”), https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Chapter-9Getting-to-Know-the-President-Fourth-Edition.pdf.
The Special Counsel’s Office also makes the puzzling claim that “Morison did not rely on CIPA”
for its flawed Entitlement Clause reasoning. Oppn. at 17. That is wrong. See 844 F.2d at 1074 &
n.28. As with Ford, the Office misread Morison. See Oppn. at 8.
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President Trump does not need to “claim that he attempted to return the documents . . . to
the wrong individual” to demonstrate this aspect of the statute’s vagueness. Oppn. at 15 n.6. The
issue is that § 793(e) offers no clarity regarding who is “entitled to receive” a former President’s
personal records under the PRA, pursuant to designations covered by presidential immunity, which
are also subject to invocation of the executive privilege. Section 793(e) does not authorize
interpretive promulgations by the Executive Branch, and the lone interpretive authority cited by
the Office—Executive Order 13526—does not apply to records designated as personal under the
PRA. In claiming that there is “no authority” for the existence of this conflict, Oppn. at 16, the
Office conveniently overlooks the positions taken by DOJ and NARA with respect to President
Reagan and President Clinton, and by the White House Counsel with respect to President Biden.
Finally, Executive Order 13526 adds neither notice nor specificity to the Entitlement
Clause (or the Authorization Clause) because it relies on “need to know” determinations that are
standardless, entirely subjective, and lacking in enforcement criteria. Time and again in this case,
the Special Counsel’s Office has cited the “need to know” concept. Not once, however, has the
Office identified adequate governing standards to evaluate those determinations other than to
assert that the Court and the parties should take their word for it.
F. The “Actual Notice” Arguments Are Inapposite
It is no response to President Trump’s arguments regarding the as-applied vagueness in
§ 793(e) for the Special Counsel’s Office to claim that he was, allegedly, “personally on notice
concerning the importance of proper handling of classified national defense information,” that
certain of the documents contained classification markings, and that the “contents of the
documents” are sensitive in the Office’s view. Oppn. at 19-20. The Office also emphasizes the
purported significance of the fact that President Trump “obtained the charged documents during
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his term . . . through intelligence briefings,” id. at 19, while at the same time improperly seeking
to withhold information regarding these briefings pursuant to CIPA § 4. None of these claims
speak to the actual text of § 793(e). They are all emblematic of the Office’s position that virtually
anything that is arguably classified can be the subject of a § 793(e) prosecution regardless of the
vague language chosen by Congress.
As the Court is aware, evidence relating to briefings, classification status, and the handling
of these documents is central to the pending motions to compel, and the emphasis on these issues
by the Special Counsel’s Office in response to a pretrial motion only underscores the extent to
which the evidence sought in those motions is discoverable. But these issues are not crucial to
President Trump’s vagueness motion. These as-applied challenges to each of Counts 1–32 are
addressed to the lack of fair notice and enforcement criteria for, collectively, the Authorization
Clause, the NDI Clause, and the Entitlement Clause. The alleged sensitivity of documents when
they allegedly passed through the Oval Office says nothing with respect to whether President
Trump was authorized to retain them, the scope of the NDI Clause, and who was entitled to receive
the personal records of a former President for the first time in history. Accordingly, the Office’s
“personally on notice” arguments miss the mark.
G. Kolender Supports President Trump’s Motion
In response to President Trump’s arguments regarding the lack of enforcement criteria in
§ 793(e), the Special Counsel’s Office cites Kolender v. Lawson for the proposition that “[d]ue
process requires legislatures to ‘establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement.’” Oppn.
at 23 (quoting 461 U.S. 352, 358 (1983)). We could not agree more. The Kolender Court added:
“[w]here the legislature fails to provide such minimal guidelines, a criminal statute may permit a
standardless sweep [that] allows policemen, prosecutors, and juries to pursue their personal
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predilections.” 461 U.S. at 358 (cleaned up). In Kolender, the statute “contain[ed] no standard”
for the relevant issue. Id. Similarly, § 793(e) contains no standards for the three separate clauses
challenged by President Trump. President Trump is being prosecuted “at the whim” of the Office,
id., based on prosecutors’ subjective and politically motivated views regarding indeterminate
statutory terms and standardless concepts in Executive Order 13526 such as “need to know.”
H. Mens Rea Does Not Cure All Vagueness Ills
The Special Counsel’s Office argues that the willfulness language in § 793(e) “alleviates”
and “may mitigate” the statute’s vagueness problems, and that willfulness is “for the jury to
resolve.” Oppn. at 21, 22 (cleaned up). These contentions ignore the Eleventh Circuit’s reasoning
that “by the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the promise of due process later on
does not obliterate the vagueness doctrine altogether.” League of Women Voters of Fla. Inc. v.
Fla. Sec’y of State, 66 F.4th 905, 948 (11th Cir. 2023) (cleaned up).
Here, mitigation and alleviation are not enough. “[T]he presence of a bad purpose or evil
intent alone may not be sufficient.” Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 103 (1945). In Cohen
Grocery, the Supreme Court struck a statute, notwithstanding a willfulness element, because the
remaining language left open “the widest conceivable inquiry, the scope of which no one can
foresee and the result of which no one can foreshadow or adequately guard against.” 255 U.S. 81,
89 (1921). So too here.
It bears repeating that willfulness was not what persuaded the Gorin Court to reject a
vagueness challenge.
There, the Court relied on a scienter requirement that required the
prosecution to prove something far more specific: “intent or reason to believe that the information
to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign
nation.” 312 U.S. at 21 n.1. The lesser requirement of willfulness, which may have been sufficient
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in other cases, does not adequately address the sui generis problems presented by President
Trump’s as-applied challenge to § 793(e).
II.
Count 19 Should Be Dismissed
Count 19 fails as a matter of law, pursuant to Rule 12(b)(3)(B)(v), and retention of the
document was not “unauthorized,” under § 793(e), because the Energy Department’s records
demonstrate that President Trump maintained a “Q” clearance during the time period alleged in
that Count. See, e.g., United States v. Berdeal, 595 F. Supp. 2d 1326, 1328 (S.D. Fla. 2009). The
Special Counsel’s Office has elected to proffer evidence in response to this motion, and courts
evaluate such proffers when prosecutors choose to make them. See Oppn. at 24; see also United
States v. Perez, 575 F.3d 164, 166-67 (2d Cir. 2009). If the Court chooses not to evaluate the
Office’s proffer at this stage, through a hearing or otherwise, then the Office’s opposition to this
motion has reinforced the need for further disclosures regarding the Energy Department’s
decision-making relating to President Trump and other Presidents because these disclosures are
“material” to an important trial defense and “favorable” to President Trump under Brady and
Giglio. See ECF No. 262 at 38-42; ECF No. 300 at 24-25.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the Court should dismiss Counts 1–32 of the Superseding
Indictment as unconstitutionally vague and, to the extent necessary to resolve factual disputes
relating to Count 19, should conduct a hearing regarding President Trump’s “Q” clearance.
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Dated: March 13,
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Todd Blanche
Todd Blanche (PHV)
toddblanche@blanchelaw.com
Emil Bove (PHV)
emil.bove@blanchelaw.com
BLANCHE LAW PLLC
99 Wall Street, Suite New York, New York (212) 716-/s/ Christopher M. Kise
Christopher M. Kise
Florida Bar No. ckise@continentalpllc.com
CONTINENTAL PLLC
255 Alhambra Circle, Suite Coral Gables, Florida (305) 677-Counsel for President Donald J. Trump
11Page 14 Case 9:23-cr-80101-AMC Document 398 Entered on FLSD Docket 03/13/2024 Page 14 of
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I, Christopher Kise, certify that on March 13, 2024, I electronically filed the foregoing
document with the Clerk of Court using CM/ECF.
/s/ Christopher Kise
Christopher Kise
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PlainSite Cover Page
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
WEST PALM BEACH DIVISION
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
vs.
Case No. 23-80101-CR
CANNON/REINHART
DONALD J. TRUMP,
WALTINE NAUTA, and
CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA,
Defendants.
_____________________________________
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S REPLY BRIEF IN FURTHER SUPPORT OF
MOTION TO DISMISS COUNTS 1–32 BASED ON
UNCONSTITUTIONAL VAGUENESS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1
DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................................. 1
I.
No Amount Of “Judicial Gloss” Can Save § 793(e) As Applied To President Trump .. 1
A.
The Prosecution Ignores The Rule Of Lenity And Legislative History ......................... 1
B.
The Authorization Clause Is Indeterminate On These Facts .......................................... 2
C.
The Court Should Reject Further Judicial Expansion Of The NDI Clause .................... 4
D. The “Closely Held” Requirement Does Not Address President Trump’s As-Applied
Challenges ............................................................................................................................... 5
II.
E.
The Entitlement Clause Is Not Limited To The “Classification System” ...................... 6
F.
The “Actual Notice” Arguments Are Inapposite ............................................................ 7
G.
Kolender Supports President Trump’s Motion ............................................................... 8
H.
Mens Rea Does Not Cure All Vagueness Ills ................................................................. 9
Count 19 Should Be Dismissed .................................................................................... 10
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 10
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INTRODUCTION
President Donald J. Trump respectfully submits this reply in further support of his motion
to dismiss Counts 1–32 of the Superseding Indictment based on the vagueness doctrine and
President Trump’s “Q” clearance (the “Motion”), and in response to the opposition brief by the
Special Counsel’s Office, ECF No. 377 (the “Opposition”).
The Special Counsel’s Office starts out with the baseless and untenable claim that the
“statute’s prohibitions are clear.” Oppn. at 1. Perhaps what the Office meant—and this would be
closer to the truth—is that courts facing inapposite factual circumstances have tried to make
§ 793(e) clearer through “explicat[ions]” and “many judicial decisions” that have broadened the
statute’s scope beyond the plain meaning of the text Congress chose. Oppn. at 2, 7. However, the
Court will be writing on what is essentially a blank slate in the Eleventh Circuit, against the
backdrop of the Supreme Court’s recent retrenchment on using “judicial gloss” to save statutes
that Congress should have written more clearly, and in the context of a former President of the
United States who relied on Article II power, Presidential Records Act discretion, executive
privilege, and presidential immunity. Section 793(e) is unconstitutionally vague as applied to
President Trump in each of Counts 1–32, and Count 19 fails to state a claim.
DISCUSSION
I.
No Amount Of “Judicial Gloss” Can Save § 793(e) As Applied To President Trump
A. The Prosecution Ignores The Rule Of Lenity And Legislative History
The Special Counsel’s Office concedes that § 793(e) is vague enough to require recourse
to judicial “gloss” applied to a different statute by the Supreme Court more than 80 years ago in
Gorin, but does not mention the Rule of Lenity—the “junior version of the vagueness doctrine,”
United States v. Caldwell, 655 F. App’x 730, 732 (11th Cir. 2016)—even once. See Mot. at 1, 10-
1
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11. The omission is telling because lenity is one of the driving forces behind the Supreme Court’s
decisions in Davis and Johnson, which are two of the three recent residual-clause decisions that
counsel strongly against continued judicial rewriting of congressional enactments.
The Special Counsel’s Office also fails to address the complex and confusing legislative
history of § 793(e). See Mot. at 4-5. Particularly after the recent residual-clause cases, it is
significant that the record “raises serious doubts as to whether Congress had even a vague
understanding” of the 1917 predecessor to § 793(e), and “virtually no understanding” of the
language of § 793(e) itself. See id. at 5 (cleaned up). Given that history, judicial efforts to achieve
a statutory interpretation that legislators in Congress did not agree upon are particularly fraught
and, as applied to President Trump, incapable of avoiding constitutional infirmities. No Eleventh
Circuit case requires that course, and the Court must not take it.
B. The Authorization Clause Is Indeterminate On These Facts
The term “unauthorized” did not provide fair notice to President Trump, and the Special
Counsel’s Office is applying the Authorization Clause in the type of arbitrary manner that the
vagueness doctrine is intended to protect against.
The Special Counsel’s Office wholly mischaracterized the only Espionage Act case they
cite in defense of the Authorization Clause, United States v. Ford, 288 F. App’x 54 (4th Cir. 2008).
Oppn. at 8. In reality, Ford quoted Morison, where the Fourth Circuit reasoned that § 793(e) is
“definite and clear” as applied to the argument in that case that the statute was limited to “classical
spying.” 844 F.2d 1057, 1063-64 (4th Cir. 1988). That is not the issue here. In Ford, the Fourth
Circuit concluded that § 793(e) was “definite and clear” with respect to the argument that the
statute “does not criminalize retention.” 288 F. App’x at 56-57. Because the text of § 793(e)
expressly prohibits retention, the clarity that the Ford panel perceived is irrelevant to this motion.
2
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The contentions that follow the mischaracterization of Ford fare no better. The Special
Counsel’s Office tried to cobble together dictionary definitions to assert that “unauthorized” means
“without official approval or permission.” Oppn. at 8 (emphasis added). The inclusion of the term
“official” is a self-serving leap not supported by the only case they cite, Nosal. There, the Ninth
Circuit interpreted “without authorization” to mean “without permission,” which is a definition
that includes lack of permission from the private party whose property is at issue. 844 F.3d 1024,
1028 (9th Cir. 2016). However, the Office forced the word “official” into their made-up definition
to try to use as a hook for invoking the National Security Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3161(a), which is not
referenced in the Espionage Act, and Executive Order 13526, which has no textual basis in
§ 793(e) either. Oppn. at 9. In an effort to cover these gaps, the Office cites Department of Navy
v. Egan. See Oppn. at 18. However, Egan concerned the impropriety of judicial review of
Executive Branch security-clearance decisions, and the Court relied in part on the Civil Service
Reform Act of 1978. 484 U.S. 518, 520 (1988). Egan does not support the Office’s argument that
national security power derived from Article II serves as a basis for relying on Executive Order
13526 to interpret a statute that makes no reference to Executive Branch input. All the stretching
and straining by the Office—from dictionaries, to Nosal, to the National Security Act, to Executive
Order 13526, to Egan—proves the point: upholding § 793(e) over President Trump’s individual
as-applied vagueness challenges to Counts 1–32 would require putting words in Congress’s mouth.
That approach is no longer viable after Davis, Dimaya, and Johnson. See Mot. at 3, 6.
The cobbled-together attempt by the Special Counsel’s Office fails as applied to President
Trump.
As the Court already observed, President Trump was “once the country’s chief
classification authority.” ECF No. 346 at 7. He occupied that role as to each of the documents at
issue in Counts 1–32. The provision of the National Security Act cited by the Special Counsel’s
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Office, 50 U.S.C. § 3161(a), does not authorize regulations binding Presidents or private parties.
See 50 U.S.C. § 3163. As explained in our submissions relating to the Presidential Records Act,
President Trump’s retention of the documents was not “unauthorized” under § 793(e), because he
designated them as personal records pursuant to the PRA during his first term in Office.
Pursuant to § 6.1(hh), Executive Order 13526 does not apply to “records” that are personal
rather than “Presidential.” Thus, insofar as Executive Order 13526 applies “equally to former
Presidents,” Trump v. United States, 2022 WL 4366684, at *8 (11th Cir. 2022), it does not apply
at all to their personal records—which is exactly how DOJ and NARA treated personal records
retained by, for example, President Clinton and President Reagan. Finally, the executive privilege,
which is fully enforceable in the post-presidential timeframe, and presidential immunity, which
President Trump had every reason to believe applied for the reasons set forth in our motion to
dismiss based on that doctrine, made the concept of “unauthorized” possession even more vague
with respect to President Trump. For all of these reasons, the Authorization Clause fails to provide
fair notice and lacks adequate enforcement criteria.
C. The Court Should Reject Further Judicial Expansion Of The NDI Clause
The “judicial interpretations” identified by the Special Counsel’s Office do not, in fact,
“narrow and clarify the text” of the NDI Clause.
Oppn. at 12.
Instead, these decisions
impermissibly increased the scope of the statute in a manner that cannot be condoned. Gorin
characterized “national defense” as a “generic concept of broad connotations” and asserted that
the phrase includes materials “related [to] activities of national preparedness,” which itself is a
nearly limitless phrase. 312 U.S. 19, 27-29 (1941). In Hitselberger, the court acknowledged that
it “might be true” that the “judicial gloss” from Gorin had caused the NDI Clause to capture
“innocuous information of alarming breadth.” 991 F. Supp. 2d 101, 105 (D.D.C. 2013). That
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seems to have been the case in Rosen, where the court suggested that the NDI Clause reaches
“matters relating to United States foreign policy and intelligence capabilities” that have nothing to
do with the statutory term, “national defense.” 445 F. Supp. 2d 602, 620 (E.D. Va. 2006)
(emphasis added). Perhaps the judge in Rosen felt obligated to follow the Fourth Circuit’s decision
in Morison, where the panel seemed to consider the phrases “national defense materials,” “secret
defense information,” and “national interest materials” to be synonymous. 844 F.2d at 1065. That
is plainly wrong as a matter of statutory text. So too was the Morison panel’s assertion that “all
vagueness may be corrected by judicial construction which narrows the sweep of the statute within
the range of reasonable certainty.” Compare id. at 1071, with United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct.
2319, 2323 (2019) (“In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all.”). For these reasons,
the Court should not follow the out-of-Circuit judicial extensions of the NDI Clause.
D. The “Closely Held” Requirement Does Not Address President Trump’s As-Applied
Challenges
The only arguably restrictive interpretation of the NDI Clause that courts have applied is
the “closely held” requirement—which is a judicial invention with no textual basis. The Gorin
Court created this requirement out of whole cloth in order to address a First Amendment issue: the
phrase “national defense information” is so broad that it arguably covers newspaper articles about
war efforts and related conversations in the public square. While the “closely held” requirement
has relevance to the ongoing discovery violations by the Special Counsel’s Office, as discussed in
Classified Supplements, it does not fully address the vagueness of the NDI Clause as applied to
President Trump.
The position of the Office seems to be that, if a document is presented to a President, then
the document contains “national defense information.” See Oppn. at 20 (arguing that it is an
“obvious fact” that documents “presented to the sitting Commander in Chief . . . contained
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national-security information that the Government keeps closely held”). No intelligible principle
could be articulated to explain why, for example, certain documents relating to the President’s
Daily Brief (“PBD”) are charged in the Superseding Indictment, while at the same time the CIA’s
website includes John Helgerson’s book describing specific PDB topics on specific days during
President Trump’s first term. 1 The Office’s “presentation” argument only further illustrates the
unconstitutional ambiguity that has been read into the statute and the failure of the NDI Clause to
provide enforcement criteria.
E. The Entitlement Clause Is Not Limited To The “Classification System”
Having argued repeatedly, and correctly, that § 793(e) is not limited to classified
information, e.g., ECF No. 373 at 4-5, the Special Counsel’s Office nevertheless tries
unsuccessfully to defend the Entitlement Clause on the basis that it is governed by the
“classification system” of Executive Order 13526. Oppn. at 14-15. The argument has no more
merit for the Entitlement Clause than it does for the Authorization Clause. There is no textual
basis for that leap in the Espionage Act, and no Eleventh Circuit case requires it.
The Special Counsel’s Office seizes on Rosen and cases relying on it. See Oppn. at 14-15.
In Rosen, the court interpreted the phrase “not entitled to receive,” which parallels the
Authorization Clause of § 793(e) rather than the Entitlement Clause. 2
The argument that
Executive Order 13526 “restricts access” to classified information says nothing about who is
“entitled to receive” records that President Trump designated as personal under the PRA.
1
See JOHN HELGERSON, GETTING TO KNOW THE PRESIDENT 263 (disclosing that President Trump
“seemed particularly interested in three pieces in the PDB,” including “manpower available to the
ISIS terrorist group” and “oil prices”), https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Chapter-9Getting-to-Know-the-President-Fourth-Edition.pdf.
2
The Special Counsel’s Office also makes the puzzling claim that “Morison did not rely on CIPA”
for its flawed Entitlement Clause reasoning. Oppn. at 17. That is wrong. See 844 F.2d at 1074 &
n.28. As with Ford, the Office misread Morison. See Oppn. at 8.
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President Trump does not need to “claim that he attempted to return the documents . . . to
the wrong individual” to demonstrate this aspect of the statute’s vagueness. Oppn. at 15 n.6. The
issue is that § 793(e) offers no clarity regarding who is “entitled to receive” a former President’s
personal records under the PRA, pursuant to designations covered by presidential immunity, which
are also subject to invocation of the executive privilege. Section 793(e) does not authorize
interpretive promulgations by the Executive Branch, and the lone interpretive authority cited by
the Office—Executive Order 13526—does not apply to records designated as personal under the
PRA. In claiming that there is “no authority” for the existence of this conflict, Oppn. at 16, the
Office conveniently overlooks the positions taken by DOJ and NARA with respect to President
Reagan and President Clinton, and by the White House Counsel with respect to President Biden.
Finally, Executive Order 13526 adds neither notice nor specificity to the Entitlement
Clause (or the Authorization Clause) because it relies on “need to know” determinations that are
standardless, entirely subjective, and lacking in enforcement criteria. Time and again in this case,
the Special Counsel’s Office has cited the “need to know” concept. Not once, however, has the
Office identified adequate governing standards to evaluate those determinations other than to
assert that the Court and the parties should take their word for it.
F. The “Actual Notice” Arguments Are Inapposite
It is no response to President Trump’s arguments regarding the as-applied vagueness in
§ 793(e) for the Special Counsel’s Office to claim that he was, allegedly, “personally on notice
concerning the importance of proper handling of classified national defense information,” that
certain of the documents contained classification markings, and that the “contents of the
documents” are sensitive in the Office’s view. Oppn. at 19-20. The Office also emphasizes the
purported significance of the fact that President Trump “obtained the charged documents during
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his term . . . through intelligence briefings,” id. at 19, while at the same time improperly seeking
to withhold information regarding these briefings pursuant to CIPA § 4. None of these claims
speak to the actual text of § 793(e). They are all emblematic of the Office’s position that virtually
anything that is arguably classified can be the subject of a § 793(e) prosecution regardless of the
vague language chosen by Congress.
As the Court is aware, evidence relating to briefings, classification status, and the handling
of these documents is central to the pending motions to compel, and the emphasis on these issues
by the Special Counsel’s Office in response to a pretrial motion only underscores the extent to
which the evidence sought in those motions is discoverable. But these issues are not crucial to
President Trump’s vagueness motion. These as-applied challenges to each of Counts 1–32 are
addressed to the lack of fair notice and enforcement criteria for, collectively, the Authorization
Clause, the NDI Clause, and the Entitlement Clause. The alleged sensitivity of documents when
they allegedly passed through the Oval Office says nothing with respect to whether President
Trump was authorized to retain them, the scope of the NDI Clause, and who was entitled to receive
the personal records of a former President for the first time in history. Accordingly, the Office’s
“personally on notice” arguments miss the mark.
G. Kolender Supports President Trump’s Motion
In response to President Trump’s arguments regarding the lack of enforcement criteria in
§ 793(e), the Special Counsel’s Office cites Kolender v. Lawson for the proposition that “[d]ue
process requires legislatures to ‘establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement.’” Oppn.
at 23 (quoting 461 U.S. 352, 358 (1983)). We could not agree more. The Kolender Court added:
“[w]here the legislature fails to provide such minimal guidelines, a criminal statute may permit a
standardless sweep [that] allows policemen, prosecutors, and juries to pursue their personal
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predilections.” 461 U.S. at 358 (cleaned up). In Kolender, the statute “contain[ed] no standard”
for the relevant issue. Id. Similarly, § 793(e) contains no standards for the three separate clauses
challenged by President Trump. President Trump is being prosecuted “at the whim” of the Office,
id., based on prosecutors’ subjective and politically motivated views regarding indeterminate
statutory terms and standardless concepts in Executive Order 13526 such as “need to know.”
H. Mens Rea Does Not Cure All Vagueness Ills
The Special Counsel’s Office argues that the willfulness language in § 793(e) “alleviates”
and “may mitigate” the statute’s vagueness problems, and that willfulness is “for the jury to
resolve.” Oppn. at 21, 22 (cleaned up). These contentions ignore the Eleventh Circuit’s reasoning
that “by the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the promise of due process later on
does not obliterate the vagueness doctrine altogether.” League of Women Voters of Fla. Inc. v.
Fla. Sec’y of State, 66 F.4th 905, 948 (11th Cir. 2023) (cleaned up).
Here, mitigation and alleviation are not enough. “[T]he presence of a bad purpose or evil
intent alone may not be sufficient.” Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 103 (1945). In Cohen
Grocery, the Supreme Court struck a statute, notwithstanding a willfulness element, because the
remaining language left open “the widest conceivable inquiry, the scope of which no one can
foresee and the result of which no one can foreshadow or adequately guard against.” 255 U.S. 81,
89 (1921). So too here.
It bears repeating that willfulness was not what persuaded the Gorin Court to reject a
vagueness challenge.
There, the Court relied on a scienter requirement that required the
prosecution to prove something far more specific: “intent or reason to believe that the information
to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign
nation.” 312 U.S. at 21 n.1. The lesser requirement of willfulness, which may have been sufficient
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in other cases, does not adequately address the sui generis problems presented by President
Trump’s as-applied challenge to § 793(e).
II.
Count 19 Should Be Dismissed
Count 19 fails as a matter of law, pursuant to Rule 12(b)(3)(B)(v), and retention of the
document was not “unauthorized,” under § 793(e), because the Energy Department’s records
demonstrate that President Trump maintained a “Q” clearance during the time period alleged in
that Count. See, e.g., United States v. Berdeal, 595 F. Supp. 2d 1326, 1328 (S.D. Fla. 2009). The
Special Counsel’s Office has elected to proffer evidence in response to this motion, and courts
evaluate such proffers when prosecutors choose to make them. See Oppn. at 24; see also United
States v. Perez, 575 F.3d 164, 166-67 (2d Cir. 2009). If the Court chooses not to evaluate the
Office’s proffer at this stage, through a hearing or otherwise, then the Office’s opposition to this
motion has reinforced the need for further disclosures regarding the Energy Department’s
decision-making relating to President Trump and other Presidents because these disclosures are
“material” to an important trial defense and “favorable” to President Trump under Brady and
Giglio. See ECF No. 262 at 38-42; ECF No. 300 at 24-25.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the Court should dismiss Counts 1–32 of the Superseding
Indictment as unconstitutionally vague and, to the extent necessary to resolve factual disputes
relating to Count 19, should conduct a hearing regarding President Trump’s “Q” clearance.
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Dated: March 13, 2024
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Todd Blanche
Todd Blanche (PHV)
toddblanche@blanchelaw.com
Emil Bove (PHV)
emil.bove@blanchelaw.com
BLANCHE LAW PLLC
99 Wall Street, Suite 4460
New York, New York 10005
(212) 716-1250
/s/ Christopher M. Kise
Christopher M. Kise
Florida Bar No. 855545
ckise@continentalpllc.com
CONTINENTAL PLLC
255 Alhambra Circle, Suite 640
Coral Gables, Florida 33134
(305) 677-2707
Counsel for President Donald J. Trump
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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I, Christopher Kise, certify that on March 13, 2024, I electronically filed the foregoing
document with the Clerk of Court using CM/ECF.
/s/ Christopher Kise
Christopher Kise
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