Trump has now adopted that defense in an interview with Semafor and with ABC News. The problem is that bravado can come at a cost. …

It effectively means that Trump is left with threshold challenges against the use of the Espionage Act, arguing that fights over presidential papers are supposed to be addressed under the civil provisions of the Presidential Records Act. Trump repeated that defense this week.

The odds are against Trump on ultimately prevailing with that argument in the courts. However, even if he did, it still could leave false-statement and obstruction charges on the table. And, at age 77, Trump cannot leave one count remaining if he wants to avoid the threat of a potentially terminal prison sentence.

Trump, however, is not without a strategy, albeit a high-risk one. The bravado defense is likely to play better with the public than a court.

[Trump has always been a risk-taker and bravado was clearly one of his main tools going back to the early days of his empire-building. There’s a difference between using it in civil and political contexts, though, and using it as a criminal-defense strategy. Turley notes that he’s probably trying to influence the jury pool with this public defense — an opportunity opened by Smith’s “talking indictment. He might be just digging the hole deeper though when the eventual jury sees the rest of the evidence and have to sift through Trump’s shifting and self-contradicting statements in response to it. “High-risk,” indeed. — Ed]