Trump: Charges loom in documents case
Seven months after special counsel Jack Smith launched his investigation of Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents he took from the White House, a charging decision “appears to be imminent,” said Robert Costa in CBSNews.com. After grand jury testimony from dozens of witnesses, including Mar-a-Lago employees and former White House aides, Smith seems to be finishing his probe, and he met this week with Trump’s lawyers in Washington. “Smith has homed in on several key pieces of evidence,” said Sadie Gurman in The Wall Street Journal. It was reported last week that he holds an audio recording made at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J., in which Trump talks about having a document related to a potential attack on Iran. On the tape, he says he’d like to share it but isn’t legally allowed to.
The recording could be devastating for Trump’s defense, said Rebecca Beitsch in The Hill. He has claimed—and is expected to claim at a trial—that he’d declassified hundreds of records found at his home. But the tape shows he knew otherwise. Legal experts say he’s all but certain to be charged not only with obstruction but with violating the Espionage Act, which covers national-defense information. “This is game over,” said former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman. Smith’s case is now “overwhelming,” said Harry Litman in the Los Angeles Times. His evidence includes notes and testimony from Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, who was made to testify after a judge ruled he’d been misled by Trump and so wasn’t bound by attorney-client privilege. Corcoran’s notes show he’d instructed Trump to turn over all classified documents in his possession, and he reportedly told the grand jury that someone—almost certainly Trump—had prevented him from looking for subpoenaed papers in Trump’s office, where the FBI later found documents Trump had failed to turn over.
A felony indictment seems nigh, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, but Trump detractors should “not be joyful” over this horrifying affair. A former president took top-secret government documents, then spent over a year lying about them and blocking efforts to retrieve them. He’s already been indicted for falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment to a porn star, and might soon face charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election. We can only hope that justice is done “without fear or favor”—and that “such a small, craven, supremely unworthy man” will never again hold America’s highest office.