Jack Smith

If Donald Trump beats federal charges over the handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, special counsel Jack Smith may have his boss to blame.

That’s according to former federal prosecutor Shan Wu, who writes for The Daily Beast that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s cautious approach to prosecuting the former president put Smith at a disadvantage that Trump’s lawyers are now trying to exploit.

Donald Trump in a social media rant Tuesday suggested that the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing is part of broader “Cocaine dilemma,” and the former president said he has a plan to solve it.

U.S. Secret Service agents found the powder in a small clear plastic bag in a heavily trafficked area on July 2 during a routine White House sweep, The Associated Press reports. The powder was later confirmed to be cocaine.

Despite already facing a total of 71 criminal counts — 37 in special counsel Jack Smith's federal Mar-a-Lago case, 34 in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr.'s case in New York State — former President Donald Trump may be up against even more criminal charges if an investigation by Fulton County DA Fani Willis leads to a state indictment in Georgia.

Willis has been probing Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, which is also the focus of a separate and broader probe being conducted by Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). It remains to be seen whether either case will lead to an indictment, but according to CBS News reporters Graham Kates and Nikole Killion, Georgia residents selected as grand jurors on Tuesday, July 11 "may soon consider charges against Trump."

Donald Trump's chief defense will face an early test soon when his attorneys appear for a hearing to decide how to handle issues involving classified materials.

The former president insists that he lawfully declassified all the materials he took from the White House before leaving office, but national security attorney Brad Moss told The Messenger that the hearing scheduled for Friday would force Trump to "put up or shut up."

Controversial U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted a delay for Donald Trump's aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta in a classified documents case. Prosecutors have called the delay "unnecessary."

In a filing on Monday, Nauta's team asked to delay Friday's hearing, which was set to determine how some materials would be handled in the trial. The attorneys did not propose a date for the new hearing.

Former President Donald Trump's advisers reportedly believe that his best shot at beating the multiple legal charges against him involves winning the 2024 presidential election.

The New York Times is reporting that "some of the former president’s advisers have been blunt in private conversations that he is looking to winning the election as a solution to his legal problems," which include both federal charges leveled by special counsel Jack Smith and state charges leveled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Former President Donald Trump is set to get a very favorable jury pool for his upcoming trial for pilfering top-secret government documents.

The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery reports that Judge Aileen Canon's decision to hold Trump's trial at a satellite courthouse far away from West Palm Beach means that "Trump’s jurors are set to be drawn from the most brightly red corner of a vast court district, plucked from a community that leans heavily Republican—instead of the highly populous and more Democratic urban areas further south."

Over the weekend, Donald Trump told his supporters that the charges against him were "bulls---," but former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal thinks that the claim is "BS" itself.

Speaking with legal expert Bradley Moss on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell program on Monday, Katyal explained that the only thing that is "BS" is Trump's defense.

Former President Donald Trump has already been indicted in two cases — state charges of business fraud brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg related to his alleged hush payment to, and federal Espionage Act and obstruction charges for hoarding highly classified national defense secrets at his Mar-a-Lago country club. And he could possibly be charged as part of the January 6 investigation as well.

One indictment against a former president and presidential candidate is already unheard of in American history; but having to juggle three would be complete chaos, said former federal prosecutor Elie Honig on CNN Monday.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are concocting a new plan to take on Biden administration officials: Namely, cutting their salaries to $0.

Politico's Playbook reports that Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) has embraced the plan as a potential alternative to impeaching the administration officials, which he doesn't think is appropriate given a lack of evidence that they have committed crimes.