In a filing to fight against the requested Special Master, the DOJ has seemingly laid out a case to hit Trump with obstruction charges.
Authorities do not deny that Trump was very cooperative in June when agents showed up to pick up documents requested by the National Archives.
However, they also stated that it now appears that Trump may have purposely hidden other documents.
Additionally, one of Trump’s attorneys has signed a sworn statement that all relevant documents had been removed.
To put it simply… someone is going to be in big trouble.
Obstruction Case
The DOJ clearly has someone deep inside Trump’s inner circle.
It appears more and more likely that it is a Secret Service agent due to the nature of the information.
The DOJ was not only told that there were still classified information on property, but it was also reportedly told some documents were being purposefully hidden in other areas away from the storage area where the rest of the documents had been kept.
Brad Moss, a national security law expert, stated, “There are plenty of cases in which the government has declined to prosecute where classified records were stored in unauthorized locations. One of the factors that often resulted in charges being pursued was the extent to which the individual obstructed efforts to locate and recover those records, as well as evidence of willful (as opposed to inadvertent) retention.
“If nothing else, the government filing fleshed out in new detail not just efforts by Trump to resist the return of the records but apparent efforts to conceal them so government officials could not find them.”
The reason everyone is now pointing to possible obstruction charges being filed against Trump is the DOJ filing.
It stated, “The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.
“These concerns are not hypothetical in this case.”
Andrew Weissmann, a former general counsel for the FBI and a senior prosecutor for the Mueller investigation, stated, “The obstructive conduct is going to be, I think, an important factor in the discretionary decision that the department will have to make, which is not can it bring a charge but should it bring a charge?
“They’re going to be looking at the full scope of the criminality.
“And the length and type of obstructive conduct — I think it’s going to weigh heavily in favor of bringing charges.”
This could go well beyond Trump to include the attorney who signed the statement that a thorough search had been conducted and all related classified documents returned.
Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, address this issue.
He stated, “I think it strongly suggests his members of his legal team face criminal liability for their false statements to the Justice Department, which could break open the case even wider.
“There’s a reason for those lawyers to end up cooperating with the Justice Department, and attorney-client privilege would not block them from doing so if Trump used them as a conduit for committing criminal acts.”
This is legit and it is something that should have Trump worried.
Trump literally fell into the exact trap that the DOJ set up.
Had he just turned everything over, this would have been a complete non-story.
Now he has apparently given the DOJ exactly what it needed to take him out.
Will he go to jail? Probably not, but charges being filed are about all Democrats need to remove him from consideration for office in 2024.
Ultimately, there is their goal.
