you assess as we sit here today the strength of both prongs, the sort of underlying crime, if you will, of the mishandling of the classified documents, perhaps violations of the espionage act, as well as the incredibly brazen obstruction of that investigation? yeah. so even before donald trump opened his mouth really about this investigation, even before we knew about the dress rehearsals of moving the boxes of evidence and even before we knew about the iran tape that came out last week about the classified information and the ways in which it maintained classification after trump brought it out of the oval office, even before all of that bill barr was saying, as you point out, nicolle, this is a crime, this is a really serious threat to donald trump. and every piece of additional evidence i think makes that case stronger and stronger, which is why again, national security professionals, i don t care if you re republican or democrat or some other party. people who ve handled this, th
in this meeting, jim trusty, telegraphed something of an agenda for what he was hoping to talk about with merrick garland himself. obviously, that conversation didn t happen, but he said in a tv interview that he hoped to sort of level accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, that he wants to claim prosecutors work for jack smith s team have engaged in problematic behavior that should shape doj s charging decision in this case. of course certainly it seems like garland, lisa monaco and the other top brass at the justice department did not decide to engage with that overture that trusty made publicly. my sense in general is when defense attorneys are making overtures like this publicly, it s because private outreach has not proven fruitful the way they would hope it to be. that said, of course this meeting also comes at the investigation by all available public evidence appears to be
court-approved search of mar-a-lago. then all that was released during whatever we call it, special master process of last fall. i know that feels like 11 years ago, but it was just last fall. then there s the tapes. i mean, so much of what we re learning has been put before the grand jury is what just persuaded another jury in a different case in a civil instance to say, oh, yeah, liable. and that s trump in his own voice, you know, ruffling papers, a chick-fil-a menu or classified documents, i think none of us know the status. but he expressed clear knowledge of a declassification process and he articulated the document he was ruffling hadn t been declassified. he was signaling things he took that were classified and thing he is took that were not declassified. he s also on tape over and over and over again, even when given the opportunity by his closest media allies, sean hannity, you
follows the which it should have, the exact same plan that was done and the reasoning that was done by the judge in the manafort case. this is not one where the doj is going to second-guess what jack smith did or what the judge did because it s all been vetted. so that just seems like a real loser. you know, i think they may have made an argument based on venue. i know that sounds like a really weak tea in terms of, like, i get we re going to get charged but can we please do it in florida and not in d.c. and i think florida would be a better venue for trump than d.c. he may have already made that argument as well. what does it mean that a grand jury in florida has heard evidence? does that you know, us non-lawyers spitballing, which is always dicey, and wondered if perhaps some of the early reporting about how every single
and obtaining convictions. but every time doj has take an mishandling case to trial, it s usually in the context of there are large amounts of classified information, some indication of disloyalty to the united states, some evidence of obstruction. in this case where you see those actions of nauta, and i agree with andrew i m curious to see if there is within certainly this florida grand jury potential conspiracy charges that are coming out of florida, incorporating nauta and whether or not he was working with donald trump to obstruct justice, but again, it s important, one, because it informs whether or not doj should charge 793 or mishandling of classified information as they have in the past. i think the facts clearly support doing so given what doj has done for the past 60, 70-plus years. separately it s important to that question of is someone, are