A lawyer representing Donald Trump in the affair of the sensitive documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago has claimed that the matter has been overhyped, likening a crucial Department of Justice letter to “the stuff of an overdue library book.
Appearing on Fox News, attorney Jim Trusty worked hard to draw a comparison between the investigation into Mr Trump and the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails while serving as secretary of state – a scandal invoked by many Trump allies as they try to demonstrate a double standard in the treatment of the ex-president.
But Mr Trusty also addressed the Trump investigation itself, claiming that a letter sent by the Department of Justice to Mr Trump’s counsel earlier in June somehow indicated that the department did not in fact consider the matter especially serious.
“We think the chronology of co-operation by Mr Trump and his lawyers at the time is devastating to this idea of some sort of wilful violation of law,” he told host Martha MacCallum. “It really shows a president who was accommodating.
“You know what’s really interesting in terms of the affidavit, that oil slick of an affidavit that we received in terms of all the redactions? It leaves out June third. It leaves out a day when DoJ was allowed to walk around Mar-a-Lago, look at the storage facility, and assess things. And the advice they came up with five days later was, ‘Hey, put a lock on the door please’.
“I mean that’s not the stuff of an urgent nuclear-based espionage-type investigation. That’s the stuff of an overdue library book, and people that are perhaps holding this president to a different standard than anyone else.”
Mr Trusty’s argument rolls together several of the key claims made by Mr Trump and his defenders in the weeks since the raid: that Mr Trump is being held to a different standard than the one applied to Ms Clinton, that the documents found at his residence were of limited or no national security significance, and that the premise for the raid as stated in the unredacted portions of the affidavit underpinning the search does not hold up.
All three involve the claim that the DoJ and FBI’s motives are to some extent compromised by bias or malintent.
However, Mr Trusty’s rendering of the letter he mentioned is misleading. Far from suggesting a mere precaution, the excerpt included in the affidavit makes clear that at least some of the documents Mr Trump took to Florida with him when he left Washington were inappropriately handled, and shows that the DOJ had reason to believe that other materials removed from the White House and still kept at the property needed to be secured.
“Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information,” the extract reads. “As such, it appears that since the time classified documents were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location. Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”
The excerpt is followed by confirmation that the Trump team acknowledged receipt of the letter – and then more than three fully redacted pages.
The 3 June visit to which Mr Trusty refers, meanwhile, was described by Mr Trump’s legal team in a lawsuit filed last week demanding that a special master be appointed to review the seized documents. The visit was led by Jay Bratt, head of the counterespionage section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, whom the Trump team’s suit claims was greeted by Mr Trump and his counsel and was allowed to inspect a storage room.
According to the suit, one of the FBI agents said: “Thank you. You did not need to show us the storage room, but we appreciate it. Now it all makes sense.” There is nothing in the Trump team’s filing to indicate that the FBI were satisfied or reassured by what they found.
The Justice Department’s principal reasons for redacting large portions of the affidavit are that to publish the full unredacted version could endanger witnesses and FBI agents involved in the investigation, as well as jeopardising ongoing investigative efforts.
