Trump says he should be exonerated because jury was not informed about law or Clinton case

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he should be exonerated of the federal charges he faces relating to his handling of classified materials because the grand jury in the case was not informed about the Presidential Records Act or about another case involving former President Bill Clinton's storage of presidential materials in his sock drawer.

"THE GRAND JURY WAS NEVER TOLD ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT OR THE CLINTON SOCKS CASE, BOTH EXONERATING!" Trump posted in all capital letters on Truth Social as he is scheduled to appear in a federal court in Miami later in the day for his arraignment on 37 counts for allegedly mishandling classified documents.

The grand jury issued the indictment containing the more than three dozen counts against Trump last week.

Trump has said that he is protected under the Presidential Records Act, which he argued allows him to continue negotiating with the National Archives about which materials he could retain from his time in the Oval Office. The National Archives has said this claim is "false." 

The Clinton sock drawer case started when historian Taylor Branch revealed in a 2009 book that he and Clinton had made hours of audio recordings during Clinton's presidency. The tapes were stored in the White House sock drawer.

Judicial Watch, a legal watchdog group, filed a lawsuit to compel the Archives to forcibly seize the Clinton tapes. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected the case by stating that the Presidential Records Act did not include a provision allowing the Archives to seize materials from former presidents.

But Jackson's ruling included some other sweeping declarations that have more direct relevance to the FBI's decision to seize handwritten notes and files Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago. The most relevant is that a president's discretion on what are personal vs. official records is far-reaching and solely his, as is his ability to declassify or destroy records at will.

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.