Is Donald Trump getting scared he could end up in jail in the not-to-distant future?
As Special Counsel Jack Smith nears a charging decision on Trump’s handling of documents, the former president’s lawyers are seeking a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Donald Trump Has a New Crisis to Content With
Things are going from bad to worse for former President Trump.
Former President Donald Trump has already been indicted once, and a second indictment may be on the way soon.
The Wall Street Journal Tuesday reported on a pair of bombshells: That Special Counsel Jack Smith is nearing completion on his investigation and a charging decision, and that Trump’s lawyers are seeking to go over Smith’s head and meet directly with Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The report added that the newspaper “couldn’t determine whether Smith has decided whether to charge Trump or if he has presented a recommendation on the matter to Garland.”
Truth posted the letter to Garland to Truth Social, in which he stated that “unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly,” and added that “No president of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion.”
The letter, as some pointed out, included the unredacted phone number of his lawyers’ firm.
“We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors.”
Garland and the Justice Department have not responded, but it would appear highly unlikely that the attorney general would take such a meeting with the lawyers for the subject of a high-profile criminal investigation. Politico reported that the DOJ has not commented.
The letter comes after the announcement that the National Archives had sent a letter stating that “it would turn over to Smith’s team records of communications between then-President Trump and some of his advisers about how he could declassify documents.”
It also appears that the documents case is much closer to completion than the Special Counsel’s other investigation, into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, The Guardian reported this week that Jack Smith may have gleaned damning evidence from Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, who testified earlier this year, following a fight over whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege would be invoked.
“Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president,” the Guardian said, citing Corcoran’s notes. The newspaper had obtained about 50 pages of such notes.
Corcoran, last summer, found about 40 classified documents in Mar-a-Lago and later told the Justice Department that there were no further documents there. This turned out to be untrue.
The Guardian also reported that Trump was angered by the “unusually detailed nature of [Corcoran’s] notes.”
“Corcoran’s notes, if accurate, could also provide one more bit of evidence that Trump was well aware that he needed to hand over any and all classified documents in his possession,” MSNBC’s Hayes Brown wrote of the status of the investigation. “The former president has spent most of the past nine months loudly declaring that he did nothing wrong in bringing classified documents from the White House back to his Florida residence. In doing so, he’s repeatedly (and falsely) claimed that he declassified them, a proposition that experts have rejected given America’s well-established declassification procedures.”
Another report, by The Hill, this week said that the special counsel has subpoenaed Trump’s overseas business records, looking at Trump’s business deals in seven countries since the start of his presidency. The seven countries are China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. Smith is also looking into Trump’s association with the LIV Golf tour, which is backed by Saudi Arabia.
Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
