Navigating Classified Evidence in Public Trials for Former Presidents.

The new criminal case against former President Donald Trump hinges on documents that allegedly contain some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a public trial, but the U.S. intelligence community wants its secrets to stay secret. In such cases, a 1980 federal law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act is supposed to balance the government’s interest in maintaining secrecy with a defendant’s right to a fair trial. CIPA will be key as the DOJ prosecutes Trump, experts on national security law told POLITICO.