Global Courant 2023-05-24 07:07:00
Former president Donald Trump’s The legal team has formally requested a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland amid fears from his lawyers that the coming weeks could see a potential indictment against Trump over his alleged efforts to retain materials after leaving office and to hinder government efforts to retrieve them.
The letter, while thin on details, contains arguments that Trump should not be charged in the investigation related to his alleged mishandling classified documentssources familiar with the case tell ABC News.
The letter asks Garland to meet as soon as possible to discuss what the lawyers describe as the “ongoing injustices being committed” by Special Counsel Jack Smith and says no president has acted in such an “unlawful manner.” ” is investigated. “
The one-page letter was signed by Trump attorneys John Rowley and James Trusty and contains no specific allegations of wrongdoing by Smith and his team.
The request does not specifically specify what Trump’s legal team wants to discuss with the attorney general. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in connection with his handling of materials with classification marks.
It’s not clear whether Trump’s lawyers are acting on specific knowledge of Smith’s investigation.
Trump posted the letter to his Truth Social account Tuesday night.
Trump letter 5/23/23 Through ABC News Politics
A spokesman for Garland and a spokesman for the special counsel’s office both declined to comment to ABC News.
The letter from Trump’s lawyers follows more than a year of negotiations between Trump’s team and the administration, which resulted in a breach of trust that led to the administration’s May 2022 subpoena for documents and the subsequent search of Mar-a -Lago last August. Since then, as ABC News has done Previously reportedDOJ and Trump attorneys have continued to battle over compliance with grand jury subpoenas.
Story continues
Officials at the National Archives initially asked the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House documents in early 2022 after the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of records from the Mar-a- Trump’s Lago resort in Florida, which were improperly taken from the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
The DOJ probe reached a critical point on August 8, 2022, when Mar-a-Lago was searched by FBI agents. Federal investigators seized more than 100 documents with secret markings during the search, according to an unsealed detailed inventory list. In Trump’s office alone, 43 empty folders with classified banners were seized.
The property inventory also showed that agents collected more than 11,000 documents or photographs with no classification marks, all of which were described as US government property.
Since the August search, Trump and his legal team have found and received additional classified documents additional subpoenas for information that the administration believes may still be in Trump’s possession.
PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. (Alex Brandon/AP, FILE)
Like ABC News reported first in March, prosecutors in the special counsel’s office produced convincing preliminary evidence that Trump knowingly misled his own lawyers about keeping secret materials after he left office, according to sources describing the contents of a sealed file of a top federal judge.
In a sealed March filing, Judge Beryl Howell ordered Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony he had previously claimed to be an attorney-client. Sources said Howell ordered Corcoran to turn over some files related to what she described as Trump’s alleged “criminal scheme,” following prosecutors’ lead. Those documents include handwritten notes, invoices, and transcripts of personal audio recordings.
The meeting request from Trump’s lawyers comes as infighting within Trump’s legal team has come into the public eye.
Last weekend, former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore – who left Trump’s legal team last week — publicly accused a current attorney for Trump, alleging that Boris Epshteyn has attempted to interfere with additional searches for classified materials at Trump’s properties.
“In my opinion, he wasn’t very honest with us or the client about certain things. There were certain things, like the house searches, that he had tried to interfere with,” Parlatore said. during an appearance on CNN on Saturday. Parlatore added that Epshteyn, who has served as a sort of liaison between the lawyers, made defending Trump more difficult.
A Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement that Parlatore’s claims were “categorically false.”
Fearing indictment in classified documents investigation, Trump team requests meeting with DOJ originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
