Trump 'playing a shell game' with his supporters on criminal charges: ex-prosecutor
Former President Donald Trump has a new argument for why the Espionage Act indictment against him for his Mar-a-Lago classified document stash is illegitimate: that law doesn't even apply to him, and the only relevant law here is the noncriminal Presidential Records Act. This comes as he calls special counsel Jack Smith "deranged" and a "crackhead," and as Trump supporters escalate threats against prosecutors working on the case.
Unfortunately for Trump, former prosecutor Andrew Weissman pointed out on MSNBC, it's simply not true that the Espionage Act wouldn't apply to him.
"Can you explain to Donald Trump why he was charged under the Espionage Act?" asked anchor Lawrence O'Donnell.
"So, this is just a perfect example of Donald Trump playing sort of a shell game," said Weissman, who previously worked in former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. "He wasn't charged with murder, he wasn't charged with bank robbery, and to sit there and say I wasn't charged, and being charged now with espionage, well, he's not being charged with espionage in the sense that he's a spy. The title of the statute that comprises lots of components is called the Espionage Act."
For example, Weissman continued, "one of the things that it criminalizes is if you improperly, knowingly, and intentionally, retain national defense information. That is part of the Espionage Act. You can understand why that would be put in there, because a typical person they would be concerned about would be a spy who would get that information. But it's not required."
Indeed, added Weissman, "this is really common in the criminal law, that you have a statute with a title, for instance, RICO, and someone says, how can you charge me with RICO? I'm not an organized crime member. I'm not part of the mafia in New York. Well it's true that the RICO statute is used for that, but that's not all it's used for. This, to me, it's such a demeaning way of pandering to his base. Well there's really no there there. That's my total assessment."
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