Former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said that Donald Trump gave damning evidence against himself over the weekend that makes it easier for DOJ to prosecute him.
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Weissmann said on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House:
I look at this with my former prosecutor’s hat on, and the reporting from Mike and Maggie Haberman and the speech that you talked about that he gave over the weekend are really damning evidence, because the typical defense for somebody like Donald Trump is what a CEO argues which is I didn’t know the details, I don’t have the knowledge or intent to have violated the law.
Meaning I didn’t know what was at Mar-a-Lago. I didn’t know the content of what was at Mar-a-Lago, and so I didn’t have an intent to illegally take or retain these documents. That would be what a CEO would probably argue and is typically what we see in CEO cases. The trick is always how do you show that somebody like Donald Trump knew what was at Mar-a-Lago, and it wasn’t just his lawyers or underlings who knew the details?
Well, that he’s trying to engage in the art of the deal with respect to classified documents, and he’s saying these documents were all mine, those are incredibly damning statements that go directly to knowledge and intent, and you can be sure that the DOJ prosecutors are doing what I’m doing, which is listening to this going, this is making it that much easier to prove the only element that it could pose any real difficulty for the Department of Justice in bringing a case in bringing the Mar-a-Lago documents.
Trump admitted at a rally that he had government documents at Mar-a-Lago, but he claimed that they were his. Donald Trump admitted to the crime, which means that, as Weissmann pointed out, there is no deniability. Trump can’t claim that he didn’t know that the documents were there because he publicly admitted knowledge of them.
Donald Trump went back to the rally stage and kept talking. His statements are making it much easier for the DOJ to prosecute him.
Mr. Easley is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association