LOOMING: Special Counsel’s grand jury to reconvene and Trump is SCARED
The former president is still misrepresenting the case against him, but lies won’t mean much as the Washington DC grand jury in the classified documents investigation returns to business.
A grand jury is preparing to meet again this week, following the news that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has been wrapping up the case against Donald Trump.
There’s no official word on whether the close of the case will come with indictments, although the evidence that has been publicly revealed supports the possibility.
Aside from the evidence in the case (which reportedly includes a recording of Trump admitting he possesses documents that have not been declassified, among other things), there are ample hints that Trump and his attorneys expect indictments form the grand jury.
These include his attorneys’ request for a meeting with the Attorney General, and Trump’s own attempts to defend himself on social media.
His primary claim is that he declassified all the documents he removed from the White House, but there’s more than one failing in that claim.
The purported recording in which he admits otherwise is part of it, along with the fact that declassification is a procedure, not a declaration, and the important fact that his prosecution does not require the documents to be classified. NBC reports:
“Prosecutors cited the Espionage Act, which conjures up an image of someone acting as a spy for a foreign country. But the statute, enacted after World War I, is broader. It criminalizes anyone with ‘unauthorized possession’ of ‘national defense’ material who ‘willfully’ retains it.”
That hasn’t stopped Trump from dropping the same defense on his social media, this time penned in an op-ed from his ally, attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Dershowitz’s opinion focuses almost entirely on the ability to prosecute Trump for the crime of retaining classified documents improperly, with a quick dismissal of the potential for obstruction charges near the end. According to his opinion in the Washington Times:
“The bottom line is that if Mr. Trump or his lawyers allege — even without his testifying — that he declassified the documents, a criminal charge of unauthorized possession of classified documents would be difficult to prove..It does mean that it’s unlikely that a conviction against Mr. Trump would be sustainable.”
Dershowitz is an accomplished attorney, and certainly more than qualified to opine on the likelihood of a conviction, which may be why he’s only talking about the retention of classified documents when there are a slate of other potential charges.
In fact, the filings already public in the case reference, as mentioned above, espionage charges, which would not require the documents to be classified.
Obstruction charges, which Dershowitz dismisses so easily as virtually indistinguishable from “vigorously and lawfully defending his conduct,” could be on the table, and this latest defense ignores that Trump reportedly had his attorneys falsely claim that everything had been returned.
That hardly falls under “lawfully defending.”
Dershowitz also argues that it’s “unlikely” there’s any evidence that Trump knew he was keeping classified documents illegally — despite reports that there is a recording of exactly that.
Trump, of course, seems to believe that this, along with repeatedly screaming about the Presidential Records Act, which, contrary to his claims, does not gift him incontestable control of presidential records, proves that the case is a “witch hunt,” and “election interference” (despite beginning before he announced his candidacy.
It could be time for Trump to find out.
See below his rage post, in which he rails at the investigation and shares Dershowitz’s opinion in his defense.
