but is it a publicity stunt? i mean, if they re not the ones who put it out there, trump is the one who put it out there? right. it is, which makes it all the more weird because i don t understand, you know, what the value of a target letter to donald trump has. they do have legitimate purposes. they re used quite effectively in other cases, but sending one to, you know, to the top potential defendant and somebody who is definitely not going to be interested in any type of a plea agreement doesn t really make any sense whatsoever. so i don t know if they were doing it just to preempt with the michigan charges or what, but it does seem to be a departure from normal doj procedures. but when you say you re not sure what value it has, i mean, wouldn t they be mad if they did not get a heads-up that he was about to be indicted potentially? well, but here s the thing, the use of a target letter, that
at the target letter today, jennifer, and you were wondering what the charges there could be, obviously we re still reading the tea leaves too. we don t know but theoretically do you agree with tim those could be the charges or something else? it could be something else but he didn t talk about conspiracy against the united states, right, so obstruction was one thing, civil rights violation was another probably depriving the voters of having their votes counted but that could be a wide-ranging client conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct the functions of the u.s. government, meaning to undercut the election. so that is a conspiracy that could take into account the fake elector scheme, you know, pressure on these various officials, pressure on mike pence and all of these pieces pulled together. i agree with karen. they re likely to maybe go more streamlined in the hopes of getting it litigated before the election but still could be a wide-ranging conspiracy and not having to do with obst
cooperate, and to try and cut a plea or a cooperation deal precharge. what is your sense i mean, trump himself says he thinks he s going to face charges here. what do you think he ll be indicted for? well, i ve heard reporting that this target letter mentions obstruction of justice and, you know, witness tampering, allegedly tampering with mike pence in that proceeding, and those seem to be kind of what they re looking at. at the same time, it s an odd time to be bringing those, because certainly whether obstruction is something that applies to a proceeding like this is something that s already before the circuit court in an unrelated case so that s the kind of thing you would think before taking the unprecedented stuff or now no longer unprecedented, but the unusual step of charging a former president, you d wait and see what the appellate court says as to whether this is even legally, you know, fits within the
take place. joining me now is former trump attorney, tim parlatore, who i should note is currently representing the former new york city police commissioner bernie kerik in the election interference investigation. first on this news that trump himself broke this morning, what do you make of the target letter? do you think it means that trump is on the verge of being indicted again? you know, i don t know. it s an odd use of target letters. that is something the doj traditionally uses to send to, you know, lower and midlevel people in an alleged conspiracy, in an effort and try to give them an opportunity preindictment to cooperate with the higher-ups. as far as usual litigation strategies, it doesn t really seem to fit to send one to a person like donald trump. so, in some ways it kind of looks like a publicity stunt, but at the same time, they didn t publicize it. they let him publicize it so it s really kind of an odd object in this thing.