Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on four criminal counts by a federal grand jury investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020…
jack smith s arsenal. so andrew, let s drill down a little bit more. because i think it s important for people to understand. there was language in that original indictment talking about documents being put in boxes, being put on a plane, and flown to bedminster. so we re talking about the ability to maybe bring a case here in florida. keeping it all kind of nicely into a box in terms of the prosecution versus trying to maybe have to do it somewhere else, like in bedminster? yeah, so the constitution requires that a prosecutor bring a case where the crime occurred. sometimes a crime occurs in multiple locations. but here, one of the things that people speculate about, including myself, was that they may not have brought it because what they saw happening was happening in new jersey and bedminster, and they didn t have sufficient proof to tie it to florida. so that wasn t included there.
indictment. but he didn t bring a charge related specifically to this iran document until now. what changed? exactly how important is it? joining me now is andrew weissman, former mueller prosecutor and fbi general counsel. good to see you. start with that question. how important is this new count? there were several, 31 to be exact, willful retention of ndi counts in the original indictment. each one as a standalone count carries its own penalties. why do you think now? first to the question of why is it important? i was always sort of curious about why it was described in the indictment but not charged. one theory was that the conduct at issue was taking place in bedminster, in new jersey, and thus there was an issue that was potential, at least, that the venue would not be in florida if they wanted to bring that charge. to the extent that was an issue,
this indictment clears that up. because they say that that indictment, although it was in bed minister for some time, was also in florida. in other words, the illegal retention was in florida. that may be something new that they discovered and were able to pin down after bringing the initial indictment, so they then had the ability to add it to the florida case. but why is it so important? before we get to sort of why they did it now, it is so important because that tape recording is now going to substantiate an actual charge. it s not just background evidence or other crimes evidence. that tape recording is something that the jury can hear and be told, that tape is with respect to this charge. if you re a prosecutor, you have the defendant on tape talking about the crime. can t get any better than that. so that s why i think it s a really important addition to