Court Papers Offer Glimpse of Trump’s Defense in Classified Documents Case

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump on Friday told the federal judge overseeing his prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents that they intended to ask the government for new information, including assessments of any damage to national security.

The lawyers also told the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, that they planned to ask prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, for additional information about how the documents at issue were related to national defense — a requirement of the Espionage Act, one of the statutes that Mr. Trump has been accused of violating. In addition, they said they wanted “tracking information” concerning the classified records.

Mr. Trump’s legal team is poised to make the requests on Tuesday, when it files motions asking for additional discovery evidence. This is a standard part of the pretrial process in which the defense seeks to get as much information about the case out of the government as it can. Discovery motions often indicate how lawyers intend to attack charges before a trial begins or how they plan to defend against them once the case goes in front of a jury.

The papers filed on Friday suggest Mr. Trump may be planning to attack the multiple Espionage Act counts he is facing by, among other things, questioning whether the documents he took from the White House were actually related to national defense. They also suggest he may seek to downplay how damaging their removal from the White House was to the country’s security.