‘Defendant’ Trump was comfortable in court for classified documents case despite judge not interacting with the ‘president’

Former President Donald Trump once again found himself in U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom on Thursday for a hearing in his Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in Florida. 

Cannon, a Trump appointee who was assigned last spring to oversee the former president’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents, referred to Trump as “the defendant” during the hearing rather than “the president,” which his attorneys opted for, CNN’s Katelyn Polantz described. 

“One thing in this case that is really interesting to watch is what people refer to Trump in the courtroom,” she said. “There’s not any interaction with him directly in a day like this where it’s about legal arguments. And so, Judge Cannon, throughout the day, was referring to him as ‘the defendant,’ whereas his own lawyers are referring to him as ‘the president.’”

While showing a courtroom sketch of Trump alongside his lawyers in Fort Pierce, Florida, Polantz said Trump is increasingly comfortable sitting at the defense table, having already spent hours in Cannon’s courtroom.

“Well, take the glowering Donald Trump that you saw in the arraignments, that type of criminal defendant, and that posture of the former president — that’s not what he is like now,” Polantz said. “He’s been in Judge Cannon’s courtroom for hours at a time, and so you can tell that he is getting much more comfortable sitting there at the defense table.”

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Producers and reporters inside the courtroom said Trump spent time talking to his attorney and had reactions, such as “little facial expressions,” to a few of the arguments people were making. 

The federal judge denied one of Trump’s two motions to dismiss the case on Thursday. His attorneys contended that the criminal charges under the Espionage Act were unconstitutionally vague. Trump’s lawyers said the statute that criminalizes unauthorized retention of national defense information, which supports 32 of the 40 felony counts against the former president in the case, is overly vague.