During an appearance this past weekend on ABC’s This Week, former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who served in the Southern District of New York, discussed in a clip highlighted by the network online how Trump’s own words dismantle his defenses in a new federal criminal case.
That case involves allegations of willfully retaining national defense documents and obstructing authorities, who sought for some time to simply recover the materials before their work morphed into a criminal investigation led by Special Counsel Jack Smith at the Justice Department, who was publicly announced for his present position late last year.
Bharara discussed a recording that prosecutors obtained of a 2021 discussion in which Trump acknowledges in seemingly very explicit terms that a document he was allegedly harboring maintained a classified status. He also seemed to acknowledge that he took no sweeping action as president to declassify the other documents that authorities found and recovered, though that kind of sweeping action is exactly the sort of thing that Trump and PR defenders of his have later claimed.
“The main defense in the case that we have been told, was going to be some version of, ‘the president didn’t really understand,’ ‘he thought there was a standing order,’ ‘they could be automatically declassified,'” Bharara said. “This audio tape simultaneously makes out many of the elements of multiple of the crimes and simultaneously rebuts and debunks his defenses. He couldn’t declassify telepathically. He couldn’t declassify automatically. There was no standing order. And this tape makes that very, very clear.” Bharara also discussed the element of the case against Donald involving alleged obstruction and characterized the narrative that prosecutors have built on that front as “very devastating.”
Also charged in the case is Walt Nauta, an aide to the former president. Over the weekend, prominent Republicans like Jim Jordan and Lindsey Graham went on television and tried to defend Donald, at times vastly misrepresenting utterly basic elements of the case. Graham, for instance, characterized Trump as having been accused of “espionage,” but he was charged under something called the Espionage Act… which on any basic reading covers more than just actual spying. Check out Bharara’s comments below:
“He couldn’t declassify telepathically. He couldn’t declassify automatically…This tape makes that very, very clear.”
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara tells @GStephanopoulos that alleged recording of Pres. Trump is the “most damning piece of evidence.” https://t.co/PJkPNL9usJ pic.twitter.com/DZOnozO3F4
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 11, 2023
