Trump lawyers seek info in classified files inquiry
Team meets with special prosecutor as charges possible
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump met Monday at the Justice Department with officials, including special counsel Jack Smith, two weeks after requesting a meeting to discuss their concerns about Smith’s investigations into Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The meeting did not include Attorney General Merrick Garland or Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, and it is unclear what precise subjects were discussed.
But the visit came amid indications that prosecutors in the special counsel’s office were approaching the end of their inquiry into the former president’s handling of classified documents.
It also came at a time when Trump’s advisers have concluded that there might not be much more time to stave off charges, the people said.
The lawyers — James Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsey Halligan — left Justice after nearly two hours.
They declined to speak to reporters.
Shortly after their visit, Trump posted a message on his social media platform, Truth Social, suggesting that his legal team had at least discussed with him the possibility that he could be indicted.
“How can DOJ possibly charge me, who did nothing wrong,” Trump wrote in all capital letters.
Tim Parlatore, a lawyer who resigned last month from representing Trump, said the former president’s legal team has harbored worries for some time about how prosecutors working for Smith have handled the classified document investigation.
“I’ve long had concerns about the manner in which DOJ personnel conducted this investigation,” Parlatore said. “Regardless of what the evidence shows, if your prosecution team has engaged in misconduct, that’s a relevant factor to consider in making any charging decisions, particularly in a case with significant political magnitude.”
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Smith, declined to comment.
In a one-page letter to Garland, which Trump posted on his Truth Social account May 23, the lawyers did not cite any specific complaints by his legal team, but instead broadly asserted that Trump had been treated unfairly by the Justice Department through the investigations led by Smith.
Along with the classified documents case, prosecutors under Smith are also scrutinizing efforts by Trump and his aides to overturn the 2020 election.
The letter to Garland was an abbreviated version of a longer one that contained a more detailed account of the concerns by Trump’s lawyers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Those included the ways in which grand juries have been used in the special counsel’s investigations and attempts to strong-arm defense lawyers involved in the cases, the people said.
Trusty, who worked at Justice for more than two decades, knows Smith well: The two worked with each
other a decade ago, when Trusty was a high-ranking prosecutor in the department’s criminal division and Smith was the head of the public integrity unit.
The Trump legal team’s visit Monday came as signs have emerged that Smith could soon make a decision about whether to seek charges in the documents case.
The status of his other line of inquiry, into Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and how they contributed to the assault on the Capitol by his supporters
on Jan. 6, 2021, remains less clear.
Prosecutors said in legal documents last year that they were investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents that he took with him when he left office and whether he obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them. He voluntarily returned two batches of documents last year, and FBI agents retrieved more in a search in August of Mar-aLago, his private club and residence in Florida.
Under Justice Department regulations, Garland
would play only a limited role in whether Smith decides to bring charges against Trump.
An attorney general can overrule a special counsel in a specific circumstance: If Garland were to determine that the prosecutor’s action would be “so inappropriate or unwarranted under established departmental practices that it should not be pursued.”
Garland must also disclose that to Congress and explain any such intervention when the special counsel’s inquiry ends.