Trump team seeks AG, calls probe unfair
Former president Donald Trump’s legal team fired off a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday asking for a meeting to discuss what they call the “unfair” treatment of their client by special counsel Jack Smith.
As a legal tactic, it is unorthodox to seek a direct meeting with the attorney general to discuss investigations that have been handed to a special counsel to ensure quasi-independent management of politically sensitive matters.
Garland tapped Smith, a career prosecutor, in November, days after Trump launched his third consecutive bid for the White House. Smith is overseeing two distinct categories of Trump-related investigations: the first into how hundreds of classified documents were taken to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club and residence in southern Florida and the second into issues related to efforts to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
Tuesday’s letter, signed by Trump attorneys John Rowley and James Trusty and labeled “via courier,” repeats a longtime mantra of Trump — that the Justice Department, even when he was the president, has been biased against him. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment on the letter, which Trump made public by posting it on social media Tuesday night.
“Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly,” the letter says. “No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion. We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors.”
The letter does not specify what those alleged injustices are or even say which part or parts of the special counsel’s work they object to. But it was sent as grand jury activity in the classified documents case has slowed in recent weeks and amid speculation by some Trump advisers and outside observers that Smith may be getting closer to making a decision on whether to pursue charges in that case.
Trump is simultaneously under indictment in New York in a separate matter — a state-level investigation into falsification of business records in connection with hush money payments in 2016. He appeared via video link for a hearing in that case Tuesday, shaking his head as a judge scheduled a trial for March of next year. The former president is also a focus of an investigation in Fulton County, Ga., into efforts to overturn that state’s 2020 election results.
It is not unusual for lawyers for high-profile defendants to seek an audience with senior Justice Department officials toward the end of a federal criminal investigation. Lawyers for Hunter Biden, who has been under investigation for years for possible tax violations and a false statement related to a gun purchase, met at the Justice Department a month ago to discuss that case and try to persuade the U.S. attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, not to pursue criminal charges.
Such a meeting, however, is quite different from Trump’s approach. For one thing, those meetings are generally negotiated in private, not publicly demanded. Also, it is uncommon for such meetings to take place with the attorney general.
Instead, they would usually be held with the chief of whichever Justice Department division is handling an investigation and potential prosecution, or sometimes the deputy attorney general. And in Trump’s case, a meeting with the attorney general would be even more unusual and problematic because the special counsel appointment envisions Smith acting with greater autonomy than other prosecutors in the Justice Department. Under department regulations, the attorney general may overrule the special counsel only if the special counsel has failed to follow Justice Department policies and practices.
Anthony Coley, a former spokesman for the attorney general, said the proposed meeting was unlikely. Justice Department regulations, Coley tweeted, “are explicitly clear on the process here. Jack Smith is running this investigation, not Garland.”