Judge Appears Skeptical of Trump’s Efforts to Derail Documents Case

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents expressed deep reservations on Thursday about some of the motions filed by his lawyers seeking to have the case dismissed.

At a nearly daylong hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, entertained arguments from the lawyers and from prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith about two of the former president’s more unorthodox attacks on the federal indictment.

One of those attacks by Mr. Trump’s team was a direct, albeit dubious, assault on the constitutionality of the Espionage Act, which the government says Mr. Trump violated 32 times by removing a trove of highly sensitive classified material from the White House after he left office.

In the other attack, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asserted that under a law known as the Presidential Records Act, Mr. Trump designated the documents he took with him as…