Donald Trump is going to "lose on every front" during his upcoming trial on charges relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, according to Andrew Weissmann, an NYU Law School professor who previously headed the Criminal Fraud Section of the Department of Justice.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to 37 counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act. Those charges cover claims he wilfully retained classified documents and then obstructed justice by seeking to conceal them from the relevant authorities.
Trump has a commanding lead in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, with a recent model concluding he is on track to beat Ron DeSantis, his main rival, in either 47 or 49 of the 50 states. This ongoing legal action, including separate charges relating to Trump's alleged payment of hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels—which he also denies—could have a dramatic impact on his campaign.
On Saturday Trump discussed the case during his rally in Pickens, South Carolina, where he said: "I had every right to have these documents, personal belongings, and boxes. I had the absolute right to have them."
Weissmann challenged this claim during a Thursday appearance on Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC show, The Last Word.
"As a matter of law, he is wrong," Weissmann said. "It's not even something he going to be able to say, 'well ok maybe I'm wrong legally, but I believed I had that right' because there will be numerous lawyers or former White House counsel, and his own personal lawyers telling him these were not his. And he had a grand jury subpoena that required him to return them.
"So he is going to lose on every front on both the retaining classified documents and on the obstruction front," he said.
After the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to recover government materials in August 2022, Trump suggested as president he could declassify documents "even by thinking about it," though this claim has been rejected by legal experts.
Neal Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general under the Obama administration, also panned Trump's comments from his South Carolina rally on the MSNBC show.
"I don't think even Trump believes that this is a legal defense, Lawrence," Katyal told O'Donnell. "I think this is a political defense. He's throwing up a lot of spaghetti at the wall and hoping that that will delay the trial and cause enough doubt so that if, in 2024, he or some other Republican wins, they can just drop the prosecution."
Katyal later added: "These kinds of things, nuclear secrets, military secrets, and the like, are absolutely the property of the United States. He will lose this argument in court every day of every week, which is why nobody, no real lawyer believes this."
Newsweek reached out to Donald Trump via the press contact form on his official website for comment.
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July 07, 2023 at 09:16PM
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Donald Trump Will 'Lose on Every Front' in Documents Case: Ex-DOJ Official - Newsweek
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