Ok, which as an American citizen and a lawyer I would expect that you would respect that he has...chosen...to exercise his rights as an American citizen to test this in court. Do you agree?

If he had done so, then I would. Except he didn't.

Trump has absolutely no plausible basis for claiming he's entitled to hold onto government records in the face of a request that they be returned. But if he had, he could have responded to the government demand by doing what you claim he did - exercise his rights by testing this in a court.

IOW, a legitimate response to the government demanding the return of all the national defense information be to actually assert a claim that he was entitled to keep them in a court of competent jurisdiction.

But he didn't do that. Instead, he lied. He told them that he had returned all of the relevant documents, and then took steps to hide the ones he kept. Which is a pretty solid indication that: i) neither he nor his lawyers actually felt that there was any basis for a claim that he could keep government records in the face of a demand they be returned; and ii) he intended to wrongfully retain the ones he wanted to keep, rather than "exercise a right to test this in court."

This happens all the time in the discovery context. Party A subpoenas a bunch of documents from Party B. If Party B believes that they shouldn't be turned over, they can ask the court to exclude them from being turned over. They can't hide the documents. The first is "exercising their rights" to test a claim of privilege (or whatever) in court; the second is willful violation of a court order. And if you get caught concealing the documents, rather than having turned them over, it doesn't matter if you have some after-the-fact claim that they should have been exempt from discovery. You violated the rules by refusing to turn them over by hiding them, rather than presenting the argument that they were protected.

Assuming the facts presented in the indictment (that Trump was aware that there were classified and NDI documents in these boxes), then he committed a crime by refusing to turn them over and concealing that fact, rather than either: i) turning them over; or ii) asking a court for a ruling that he was allowed to keep them. Option #3 - lying to the government and saying that you had returned all the classified or NDI documents - was the crime.

Albaby