President Donald Trump's legal team added a claim of prosecutorial impropriety Monday to the many attacks the former president has made on prosecutors, U.S. Attorneys and others in the classifed documents case against him.
The meeting followed a letter sent to the Department of Justice by his legal team – and posted on Truth Social – that alleged "ongoing injustice."
But, according to former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, the impropriety complaint it absurd.
"This is the kind of thing defense attorneys will try and do as a last-ditch effort, to try and meet with the prosecutor, try and talk them out of it," explained Katyal. "Try and say, 'Oh, you abused my client's rights and so on. But I think, you know, those kinds of claims, we've heard them before, are pretty much going to fall on deaf ears."'
"The idea that the attorney-client privilege was violated here is exactly what was litigated before the district judge and then going up to our second highest court, the D.C. Circuit, which rebuked that kind of idea. So, it pierced attorney-client privilege."
The reference is to information that Trump's lawyer Evan Corcoran had about the documents scandal, and that he was told to turn over notes and recordings – using a "crime-fraud" exception to attorney-client privilege.
"For those really highly respected judges to have done that in the Mar-a-Lago investigation tells me that they believed a serious crime had been committed and that the attorney was part of that situation," Katyal said.
"And so they needed to get that information to the prosecutors of what that attorney knew and what that attorney did and what that attorney saw. That is a rare, rare thing. You almost never see it in the law. But it occurs only in really grave circumstances. Here all of those judges said this meets that criteria.
"So, what I think we are looking at is really truly, Nicolle, a situation where all signs are indicating Donald Trump will be indicted by Jack Smith for the mishandling of classified information at Mar-a-Lago as well as the obstruction of the investigation afterward, hiding the boxes, dress rehearsals, all that kind of stuff."
See what Katyal said in the video below or at the link here.
