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News that Donald Trump used the back of documents with classified markings as “scrap paper” to make to-do lists for his executive assistant, and her remarks to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators that Trump told her, “You don’t know anything about the boxes” of classified documents, is a “rock crusher” revelation and “yet another alleged instance of obstruction” against the ex-president, according to legal experts.
ABC News first reported the revelation that Trump had used the backs of documents with classified markings, that they wound up at Mar-a-Lago, and that an aide, Molly Michael, resigned after her concerns over his refusal to return the documents.
“We didn’t need this piece of proof, but this is an aide to Donald Trump that was saying that she knows firsthand that Donald Trump knew that he had classified information that he should not have had at Mar-a-Lago, that she told him that his claims to the government that you’ve returned, everything would be ‘easily disproved,’” said former top Dept. of Justice official Andrew Weissmann, on MSNBC late Monday afternoon.
“And when Donald Trump learned that she was going to be spoken with by the investigators, she said that Donald Trump told her, ‘you don’t know anything about the boxes.’ So you have not only a first hand witness to the illegal retention of the national defensive information, but you have yet another instance of alleged obstruction of justice, which is lying to investigators.”
Weisssmann adds, “this would make the third instance of obstruction because two are already charged in the indictment.”
“This is just too overwhelming a rock crusher of the case,” he concluded. “If this reporting is accurate, from Ms. Michael, who many people say is ’employee two’ in the Florida indictment, but if that is, it certainly has the ring of truth. Obviously, we will wait and see what she has to say at trial and she’ll be subject to cross examination like every witness in the case.”
“Wow,” wrote NYU professor of law and former Special Counsel Ryan Goodman. “This strengthens MAL [Mar-a-Lago] case measurably.”
“Obstruction; Espionage Act,” he adds.
“Knowledge, intent. And a credible direct witness,” Goodman concludes.
Trump is charged with 37 federal felonies in the case, most under the Espionage Act.
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