Every defense of Mar-a-Lago docs scandal has 'been blown up by Donald Trump': former prosecutors
A pair of former prosecutors mocked Donald Trump's efforts to defend himself in the face of an FBI search of his Mar-A-Lago home.
The Department of Justice executed a search warrant two and a half weeks ago at his Florida residence seeking classified documents the National Archives had been seeking under the Presidential Records Act, and MSNBC's Claire McCaskill said the former president had repeatedly wrecked his own defense.
"I have written down the four defenses that Trump has put forth to the crimes that are being alleged," said McCaskill, a former county prosecutor in Missouri. "One, that the information was planted. Two, that he had declassified it. Three, someone else packed the boxes, he didn't know what was there. Four, he really wanted to cooperate."
"In my estimation, every single one of those defenses have been blown up by Donald Trump," she added. "He has, in fact, leaked letters that absolutely check every single one of those defenses off the list, so he is left with nothing. My question to you is, this recent filing by his newest -- his ever-changing cast of 'lawyers' -- I put lawyers in quotes asking for a special master to look at this stuff, is it substantive or is it a stall?"
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Andrew Weismann, an MSNBC contributor and longtime assistant U.S. Attorney, said he doesn't really understand what Trump's defense attorneys were doing.
"I don't see how it is substantive," Weismann said. "Let's leave aside that the federal judge, the day after that was filed, said to those lawyers, with air quotes, 'I don't know what you're asking for, I don't know your statutory basis, I don't even know why you came to me and didn't bring this before the judge hearing the search warrant issues.' That's never a good sign, but on the merits of what they're asking for, it doesn't make any sense to the extent that the former president is saying, 'I need them back. They're covered by executive privilege.'"
"By definition, if the documents are covered by executive privilege, which is a big if, they'd belong in the National Archives," Weismann added. "The remedy he seeks, return of the documents, makes no sense. These are not his documents, they belong to the federal government. It should be in the National Archives, for good reasons under the statute. So I don't anticipate that that lawsuit is going to go anywhere, you know, substantively. Even if his lawyers do get their act together and, you know, correctly file it."
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