Legal expert doesn't understand why Trump's lawyers are 'spinning things that are clearly false'
April 11, 2023
Donald Trump's new lawyer appeared on the Sunday morning political talk shows this weekend appearing to explain how Trump ended up with 15 boxes of federal documents — including classified ones — in his desk drawer.
James Trusty offered: "Yeah, I mean can you imagine — does anybody in their right mind really think that Donald Trump came down to Mar-a-Lago while still president, I guess, in January, and said hey, these are the boxes I packed, let's be careful with those. That goes in the dining room that goes in the closet."
"Who put that classified document in his desk drawer?" Lawrence O'Donnell asked on his Monday evening.
Joining O'Donnell on MSNBC, former FBI general counsel and now NYU Law Professor Andrew Weissmann explained Trusty's answer isn't a very good one. He began with the supposition that every American has the right to a lawyer and that the lawyers have their own jobs to do in these situations, but ultimately acknowledged it wasn't that much of an excuse.
"There is a difference between what you see Mr. [Joe] Tacopina or Mr. Trusty doing and essentially spinning out things that are clearly false, so why even bother?" Weissmann asked. "I mean, you can go ahead and mislead the public when you know that is what you are doing in dodging questions, on the one hand. And on the other, you have Susan Necheles, one of Trump's counsel. And you know, when she was asked about this right after the arraignment, she gave, I thought, the best answer. She didn't try to defend it. She said, 'Look, he was angry.''"
Weissmann went on to explain that in this case, it's probably the best any lawyer can do when they're trying to maintain their own professional integrity.
"One of the concerns I have about the newest member is that he left a large law firm to now be a solo practitioner, meaning he has one and only one client," Weissmann said. "It is going to be really hard for that person to say 'no' to his one client. So, I don't expect that we are going to see more of the Susan Necheles path and I think we're going to see more of the things that you've been showing on your show."
See the full conversation below or at the link here.
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