Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers have demanded a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland as prosecutors appear to be wrapping up the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
Claiming he has been “baselessly investigated,” Trump’s lawyers asked Garland for the sit-down in what appears to be an eleventh-hour effort to derail special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation.
“Trump is being treated unfairly,” Trump lawyers James Trustey and John Rowley wrote in the one-page letter. “We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors.”
The letter refers to unrelated probes into President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
The letter does not specifically mention the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which Smith is investigating as well as Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
But its timing is significant, coming as The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Smith is “wrapping up” his investigation into the classified documents that Trump improperly took to his Florida resort, along with his defying a subpoena for their return.
Defense lawyers in high-profile cases sometimes appeal directly to top prosecutors to pull the plug on investigations.
But those pleas almost always take place in the final stages before a decision is made about whether to seek an indictment or not.
Bluster aside, Garland has a reputation as a very cautious prosecutor who could potentially be open to the pleas to avoid putting a former president on trial.
Trump faces myriad legal woes, including a criminal trial scheduled for March on charges related to hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The documents case has long stood out as the simplest legal test for prosecutors and therefore the most likely to result in federal charges.
Trump has admitted knowingly taking classified documents with him when he left the White House, even boasting that he had every right to do so on a recent CNN town hall.
He failed to return more than 100 of the documents even after being hit with a subpoena demanding them, in what legal analysts call fairly clear-cut evidence of obstruction of justice.
It’s not uncommon to prosecute officials for mishandling classified documents, particularly if there is evidence of a failure to cooperate in their prompt return.
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