Several leaks to the media about cases involving former President Donald Trump have drawn criticism from a legal expert, who claimed they “further reinforce” Republican assertions that the investigations are politically motivated.
The criticism follows the disclosure of a judge’s sealed decision alleging that Trump purposefully deceived his attorney over sensitive information found at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
In a confidential brief last week, a retired federal judge said that the government had presented “compelling preliminary evidence” that suggested Trump had “knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials after leaving office.”
U.S. Judge Beryl Howell, who just resigned from her position as the head judge of the D.C. district court, said in a document that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office’s prosecutors had provided enough preliminary evidence to show that the former president had committed crimes.
According to the article, this might nullify the attorney-client protections invoked by two of his attorneys.
Howell required Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Trump, to comply with a grand jury subpoena to testify on six different lines of investigation that he had previously shielded under attorney-client privilege in her unreported filing.
Howell came to the conclusion that the prosecution’s early proof of Trump’s criminal activity satisfied the prima facie requirement needed to overcome Corcoran’s privilege. The court did stress that the prosecutors must reach a higher level of proof in order to press charges against Trump, and that they will need much more proof to establish his guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt, according to the BBC.
However, constitutional specialist and professor at Georgetown Law School Jonathan Turley stated that the disclosure of the confidential document was “deeply troubling” and part of a “pattern of selective leaks that are designed to influence public opinion.”
“This is a continuation of a pattern of leaks related to the Trump investigations that extend seven years, through the Russian collusion investigation,” Turley claimed.
Turley continued, “These leaks make a mockery of the system, and they “further reinforce the narrative of Donald Trump that the Department of Justice is engaging in unethical or improper means to target him in election year.”
Turley stated that Garland has shown “no interest in investigating his own department,” adding that “These leaks have one overriding common denominator: they all tend to undermine Donald Trump and to implicate him in the alleged crime.”
On Monday, representatives from the Justice Department met with Trump’s attorneys to discuss the ongoing federal investigation into his handling of sensitive information.
An unusual FBI search on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in August marked the investigation’s conclusion and was sharply criticized at the time.
After special counsel John Durham’s report implicated Clinton’s campaign as being responsible for the fake “Russian collusion” charges against her competitor, Donald Trump, several Republicans proposed last month that the Republican-led House launch additional investigations against the former secretary of state.
“The media was in on this from the beginning, in my view. They’re the ones who were willing to launder out Hillary Clinton’s phony, made-up information about Donald Trump,” Rep. Byron Donalds told Fox, going on to say it was “the same information that she used with her friends at the upper echelon of the FBI to start the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation.”
At least four inquiries into the Clinton Foundation and Hillary herself had been started by the Justice Department and various FBI divisions prior to the 2016 presidential election. Hillary was charged with violating laws regulating the handling of classified information after it came to light that she possessed her own personal email server set up in her New York residence while functioning as Secretary of State under Obama.
She was also being looked at for allegedly erasing sensitive documents and emails that were the subject of congressional subpoenas.
Prior to the 2016 election, when it was anticipated that Clinton would defeat Trump, all four investigations were eliminated.
Trump has put up a vigorous defense on his Truth Social platform.
On Saturday he put out a scathing post, stating:
“The same people that illegally spied on my Campaign, created the Fake Dossier, cheated and rigged our sacred Presidential Election, tried and failed with Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, pushed for years the Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, invited the “No Collusion” Mueller Bull…., FBI/Twitter Files, FBI FACEBOOK Collusion, put the top DOJ official into the local D.A.’s Office to run the Witch Hunt in Manhattan, and more, are those that are now pushing the Boxes Hoax against “TRUMP.””
And on Tuesday he continued:
“HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED. ALSO, PRESIDENT CLINTON HAD DOCUMENTS, AND WON IN COURT. CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP – THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!”
Rephrased from: The Republic Brief By: Trump Knows
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