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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. officials are emphasizing the importance of face-to-face diplomacy as the nation’s top diplomat prepares to embark on the first visit to China by a sitting secretary of state in nearly five years — but insisting they are “clear-eyed” about the long odds of improving the strained relationship amid continued acts of aggression by Beijing.

The Biden administration emphasized the need for “intense diplomacy” with China despite the country’s military carrying out dangerous provocations earlier this month in the Taiwan Strait, according to U.S. officials.

“Intense competition requires intense diplomacy to ensure that competition does not veer into confrontation or conflict and that’s what we intend for this visit,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday.

Timing of the trip

Last week, White House spokesperson John Kirby condemned a close call in the Taiwan Strait that occurred days prior when a Chinese warship crossed just about 150 yards across an American destroyer’s bow, a move the Pentagon described an “unsafe maritime interaction.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s initially planned to journey to Beijing in February, but his travel was scrapped by the Biden administration at the last minute after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted hovering over sensitive sites in the U.S.

After repeatedly saying Blinken’s visit would be rescheduled “when the time is right,” the White House isn’t clearly explaining why it’s moving forward with the trip now.

ABC News’ Mary Bruce asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “Why is this now the right time?” during a briefing on Wednesday.

“We believe that we are in the right footing, especially in the work that the president has done the last two years. When you look at the economy, when you look at the competition, and look at what we have been able to do. And so we want to continue to have those open lines of conversation. And this is about diplomacy, which is why the secretary of state is heading is heading to China on Saturday,” Jean-Pierre answered.

President Joe Biden confirmed Thursday that he had spoken with Blinken ahead of his trip, but he would not say what he hopes the secretary can achieve during the visit.

Months after the spy balloon incident, China’s efforts to surveil the U.S. are still a hot button issue. Earlier this week, Blinken addressed Beijing’s recently exposed intelligence-collection activities in Cuba and claimed diplomacy had slowed the country’s efforts to expand its military power.

Although the relationship remains fraught and senior State Department officials don’t anticipate a turnaround in the near future, they say there are still benefits to direct diplomatic engagement.

“We’re not going to Beijing with the intent of having some sort of breakthrough or transformation in the way that we deal with one another,” Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said. “We’re coming to Beijing with a realistic, confident approach and a sincere desire to manage our competition in the most responsible way possible.”

Blinken’s agenda

Still, senior State Department officials say that Blinken has three clear goals for his visit: keeping lines of communication with China open to avoid potential conflict, promoting American interests and exploring potential areas of cooperation.

A particular area of focus for Blinken will be revitalizing channels between the two countries’ armed forces. Although diplomatic ties have warmed somewhat in recent weeks, dialogue between high-level military officials has been practically nonexistent.

That facet of the relationship was further strained last month when China rebuffed an invitation to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and a summit in Singapore.

“We are going to continue to advocate for appropriate military-to-military contact and dialogues. We think that is an essential feature for maintaining communication. And these lines of communication can be critical during a crisis,” said deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell.

Campbell added that the U.S. has “advocated for these discussions consistently” but said “China has resisted some of those efforts.”

Officials also said that China’s fentanyl production and trafficking activities would be on Blinken’s agenda, as well as the American citizens wrongfully detained in China.

Despite intense preparations that have been underway for weeks, Blinken’s schedule for the trip remains largely in flux, with the State Department confirming only that he is expected to meet with senior Chinese officials.

That will likely include China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, and Wang Yi — China’s top diplomat who met with Blinken in Germany after the spy balloon incident. U.S. officials later described that interaction as remarkably contentious.

Whether Blinken will meet with China’s President Xi Jinping during the upcoming trip is still not clear.

The future of U.S.-Chinese relations

Blinken’s visit to Beijing could also pave the way for future engagement between the highest levels of leadership. Biden and Xi met in Indonesia last November, and there is speculation they could hold another in-person discussion later this year.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has attempted to set a firm tone in the runup to Blinken’s visit. In a readout of a call between the Secretary of State and Foreign Minister Gang, the ministry warned Washington to “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs.”

But the U.S. sees what China classifies as “internal affairs” as pivotal international issues — specifically, maintaining peace in Taiwan and the South China Sea as China makes preparations to invade the island nation. U.S. intelligence has indicated Xi is instructing his military to “be ready by 2027” to invade Taiwan.

Officials said Blinken would raise both matters during his visit and promised he would continue to “push back” on China’s “provocations” in the region.

“I think cross-strait issues and issues related to Taiwan have always been among the most important and challenging and sensitive issues between the United States and China,” Campbell said.

“And I think you can anticipate, as has been the case in every bilateral meeting I’ve been in with the Chinese, that there’ll be a candid exchange on the cross-strait situation,” he added.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump last fall rejected a proposal from one of his attorneys who was attempting to keep charges off the table in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents, multiple sources told ABC News.

The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to propose a settlement with the Department of Justice that would preclude charges — but the idea was quickly shut down by Trump and some members of his team who believed in a more adversarial approach to federal investigators, the sources said.

Based on Smith’s investigation, Trump was charged on Tuesday with 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Kise, who never approached prosecutors about the idea of a settlement, appeared with Trump during his arraignment Tuesday. News of the settlement idea was first reported by the Washington Post.

The former president has denied all wrongdoing in the case, saying that his handling of all documents was in line with the Presidential Records Act. Officials with the National Archives and Records Administration, however, have said that the act requires a president to separate personal and presidential documents “before leaving office.”

The episode represents one of several times that Trump’s lawyers and advisers had urged him and his team to be more cooperative with investigators as authorities pursued the return of classified documents, as sources previously told ABC News.

The news comes as Trump narrows down his list of potential attorneys as he and his team work to expand his legal team following the resignation last Friday of two of his lawyers, Jim Trusty and John Rowley.

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(WASHINGTON) — Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump, speaking to supporters hours after his arraignment, outlined potential legal arguments as he defends himself against his second indictment.

Trump took the stage at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club just hours after his appearance in a Miami courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts in relation to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“This day will go down in infamy,” he said.

Trump unloaded on the charges and in the process mischaracterized aspects of the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act, experts told ABC News.

Here’s a more in-depth look at the former president’s claims.

He cites the Presidential Records Act

“Under the Presidential Records Act, which is civil not criminal, I had every right to have these documents,” Trump said.

The 1978 law, not mentioned in the indictment, states just the opposite, as it requires records created by presidents and vice presidents be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.

“On the contrary, the former President had absolutely no right to have taken any presidential records with him to Mar A Lago,” Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at NARA, told ABC News in an email.

“Under the Presidential Records Act, the Archivist of the United States assumed legal custody of all Trump White House official records immediately upon President Biden’s swearing in as President,” Baron said. “Every piece of paper constituting an official document, whether it was classified or unclassified, should have been turned over to NARA. Moreover, when NARA staff asked for the return of the records improperly taken, the former President should have immediately given NARA every official document in his possession.”

Among the documents found at his Florida estate, according to prosecutors, were ones marked “top secret” and some about the country’s nuclear programs.

“I think it is misleading because the Presidential Records Act just isn’t the statute at issue,” Margaret Kwoka, a law professor at Ohio State University, told ABC News of Trump’s remarks.

“There’s no reason to think that the Presidential Records Act somehow overrides the Espionage Act,” Kwoka added. “And so this is not, in my view, going to provide a very strong sort of basis for defense against the charges in the indictment.”

He alludes to a judge’s decision in a case involving former President Bill Clinton

“Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s decision states under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, the decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term and in the president’s sole discretion,” Trump said.

Trump has repeatedly pointed to a case involving former President Bill Clinton in the wake of the indictment.

In 2010, the conservative group Judicial Watch sued the National Archives and Records Administration, arguing audio tapes kept by Clinton for interviews he did with historian Taylor Branch during his years in office — and which he afterward allegedly kept in a sock drawer — were “presidential records” and should be made available to the public.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed the case, and Trump and his allies have taken to quoting different parts of her opinion in their defense.

The Presidential Records Act does contain an exception for personal records, according to Baron, including items such as “diaries, journals, and other personal notes that were never used in the transaction of government business.”

“President Trump had the right to keep those types of records. But the argument being made by some that he had some kind of absolute authority while president to declare classified records or other official records about government business as his personal records is absurd in its face,” he said. “It is also contrary to law. The decision by Judge Jackson cited prior precedent from the D.C. Circuit that stands for the opposite proposition.”

That citation included in Jackson’s opinion reads, in part, that the Presidential Records Act “does not bestow on the president the power to assert sweeping authority over whatever materials he chooses to designate as presidential records without any possibility of judicial review.”

“Judge Jackson went on to speculate about the level of deference to be afforded a president making a categorical decision about whether records of his were personal, but she never ruled on that issue,” Baron said. “Instead, the case was dismissed on the grounds that plaintiff had no standing to compel the Archivist to seize materials not in the government’s possession.”

There are also significant differences between the materials in question in the two cases.

“In that case, the records were very different and really did seem arguably personal,” Kwoka said of the Clinton matter. “We’re just sort of nowhere near the situation that we’re discussing today with the records that President Trump kept.”

He claims he was still negotiating with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

“I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided,” Trump said.

Trump continued to make an argument he and his team have been for months, asserting he’s allowed to negotiate with NARA over which documents are personal and what’s presidential after leaving office.

NARA, in a June 9 statement, said the law requires a president to separate personal and presidential documents “before leaving office.”

“There is no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports,” NARA said.

He says he’s being treated like a spy

“The Espionage Act has been used to go after traitors and spies. It has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents,” he said.

Trump has been charged under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) of the Espionage Act, which prohibits unauthorized retention and disclosure of national defense information, and does not require that information be classified or disseminated to a foreign government.

Neither did the indictment charge him with disseminating information with the intent to harm the U.S.

Still, Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed he’s accused of being a spy.

“This is not an uncommon argument for defendants to make,” David Aaron, a senior counsel at Perkins Coie and former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department’s national security division, told ABC News. “The title Espionage Act is kind of a misnomer because it includes much more than espionage.”

“Espionage is a different section entirely of Title 18. He’s charged simply with willfully retaining national defense information,” Aaron said. “He’s not charged with disclosing classified information to foreign governments or to anyone else, although there are references in the current indictment to his alleged disclosure to unauthorized people.”

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