Former President Donald Trump vowed to testify under oath about the allegation that he tried to have evidence in his classified documents case deleted — a courtroom maneuver one legal expert panned as "extraordinarily dangerous."
In a Friday preview of his forthcoming interview with new "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker, the former president took aim at special counsel Jack Smith, who in July filed three additional charges against Trump in the case, including two new obstruction counts based on allegations that his two co-defendants attempted to scrub surveillance video at Mar-a-Lago. When Welker asked about one of the new charges, Trump vehemently denied the allegation as "false" and said he'd testify under oath that it was.
"Look, It's a fake charge by this deranged lunatic prosecutor who lost in the Supreme Court nine to nothing, and he tried to destroy lots of lives. He's a lunatic. So it's a fake charge," he continued. "But more importantly, the tapes weren't deleted. In other words, there was nothing done to them. And, they were my tapes. I could have fought them. I didn't even have to give them the tapes, I don't think."
After NBC rolled the preview, co-anchor Savannah Guthrie noted that Trump is not accused of deleting surveillance footage but of asking for the footage to be canned.
In response to the preview during a CNN appearance Friday, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig argued that the only way for Trump to make his claim of false charges hold legal weight is to "take the stand," adding that his lawyers would advise Trump against doing so.
"Taking the stand in any defendant's own defense is rare and very risky," Honig said. "Here I think it would be completely self-destructive. I know Donald Trump has been saying he wants to testify. I assure you his lawyers are saying, 'Please do not do that. It would be extraordinarily dangerous for you to take the stand and testify in your own defense.'"
