Legal analyst predicts Trump's next excuse will be the 'old man' defense
Donald Trump appeared on the Fox News network on Monday, where legal analysts believe he did more harm than good for his case in the stolen documents trial.
Speaking about the segment on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, along with Andrew Weissmann and Bradley Moss, listened to the interview on camera, shaking their heads and occasionally chuckling.
"Well Lawrence, the breaking news tonight is that the special prosecutor, Jack Smith has a new addition to his legal team tonight, an unpaid new deputy special counsel: His name is Donald J. Trump," Katyal quipped.
What Trump has described contradicts both the tape-recorded conversation about the Iran war plan and testimony from those who were in the room and heard what was said.
"So, Mr. Trump, good luck with that defense," said Katyal. "If it were just newspaper articles, why in the world are you saying on the tape that it's classified? It's totally incoherent. And the other parts of the tape, like the part you just played for Andrew, really is an admission of guilt. Like, if you just think about the Espionage Act, what is the prosecution need to show? They needed to show the defendant had unauthorized possession of a defense intelligence — national defense documents, that he willfully retained the document, and failed to give the documents to an officer of the U.S. Those are the elements. So, the Trump admission goes to all of that."
The next clip that O'Donnell played asked Trump again why he wanted the documents. He explained that he never said he wanted to keep the documents.
"I was giving them back. All of a sudden, we got raided," Trump claimed. The indictment says that at the time, Trump was having his valet Walt Nauta, move the documents around so that they couldn't be found.
Moss said that he has figured out that he's going to use the "old man" defense.
"He's going to say he's gotten old. He's been with all these retirees down in Florida. He can't think anything straight. He doesn't know what he has, he forgets things. He gets facts jumbled up," Moss joked. "Look at that clip, he is talking about, 'Oh we were negotiating when Nauta and I got raided.' Well, no, you left something out. There was a subpoena that came after that, after you started giving stuff back. And you lied to the DOJ, you had Nauta moving documents; that's why you got raided. I understand. It happens to a lot of individuals when they move down to Florida. They start to get confused. It will be me one day, I'm sure. But no, this is not a defense. He has clearly walked himself into a bunch of damaging admissions. Jack Smith has gotta be recording all of that, and they are just laughing and popping popcorn because he did nothing to help his case."
See the discussion in the clip below or at the link here.
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