Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, may have damaged a key defense in the former president’s legal case over handling classified documents.
ABC News reports that Meadows is alleged to have informed Special Counsel Jack Smith that he had no knowledge of Trump’s intention to declassify sensitive documents before he left the White House in 2021, nor was he aware of any “standing order” authorizing the 77-year-old to automatically declassify sensitive information removed from Washington D.C.
Importantly, Meadows is one of the 19 suspects charged with election interference in Georgia, but has not been indicted as part of Smith’s classified document probe.
The Response From Team Donald Trump
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges levied against him, and his attorneys deny any wrongdoing. Facing 40 charges in his second indictment alone, Trump pleaded not guilty to the allegations that he illegally retained classified documents after his presidency and later attempted to obstruct the federal efforts to retrieve them.
He has long maintained that he had declassified the documents retrieved by the FBI in a raid on his Mar-a-Lago home last August. The following month, the former president Fox News that he had the presidential power to declassify sensitive documents just “by thinking about it.”
It’s a claim which has been disputed, not helped by the leaking of an audio tape from July 2021. During the conversation at his resort in Bedminster, NJ, Trump discussed his possession of a “highly confidential” Pentagon paper, adding that he “could have declassified” the document as president but was unable to do so since he had left office.
Nevertheless, Trump’s campaign team maintains his innocence, accusing Smith’s office of “selectively leaking incomplete information that lacks proper context because they know they can’t win inside a courtroom.” The statement to Newsweek added, “This witch-hunt is nothing more than a desperate attempt to interfere in the 2024 election as President Trump dominates the polls and is the only person who will take back the White House.”
The View From Experts
The latest revelations regarding Meadows could hamper Trump’s key defense. Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told ABC News that while the audio tape had “undermined” his position, the Meadows evidence could be even more damning.
“This is additional evidence, by someone who was very close to Donald Trump, undercuts his theory which was on its face a little bit laughable that he could telepathically or automatically declassify something,” Bharara said.
“We’ll have to see how it works out with respect to his testimony. Can you be compelled to testify when you take the Fifth Amendment? Would he get immunity? All those things are possible. We’ll have to see how that unfolds. But yeah, it’s pretty damning.”
Moreover, former Department of Justice spokesperson Sarah Isgur added that Meadows’ closeness to Trump makes him a key witness in the classified documents case.
“When you’re thinking about a jury, there’s just no better witness than Mark Meadows in terms of his closeness to Donald Trump, both in terms of what he’d know crossing his desk, but also his closeness to Donald Trump in understanding what Donald Trump was thinking,” Isgur said.
“The only thing better, of course, is going to be the audio of Donald Trump himself in that interview.”
Whether Meadows has flipped remains unclear at this stage, as he only faces charges in Georgia and not at federal level. “We have a situation in which he has been charged in the Georgia case,” Bharara told ABC News.
“And it’s unlikely that you’re charged and defended in one case, but you flipped in a related case. So, I don’t know that he’s cooperating.”
Shay Bottomley is a British journalist based in Canada. He has written for the Western Standard, Maidenhead Advertiser, Slough Express, Windsor Express, Berkshire Live and Southend Echo, and has covered notable events including the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
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