OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A pair of former federal prosecutors have identified a number of flaws in the 49-page indictment against former President Donald Trump they suggest will work in his favor if the case goes to trial.
Former DOJ Deputy Assistant Attorney General Victoria Toensing and former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova noted that all the allegations are problematic for Trump if they are true, but that doesn’t mean the case is rock-solid.
As reported by Newsmax, “Trump on Thursday was indicted, accused, among other things, of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate. The prosecution marks the first time in U.S. history that a former president faces criminal charges by the federal government he once oversaw. He faces the possibility of prison if convicted.”
Toensing said Friday during an appearance on Newsmax’s “Chris Salcedo Show,” “The allegations are rather problematic for the president if they are true.”
“We all know Trump can be kind of undisciplined; that said, the problem here is the abuse of discretion. That conduct is not wrought in any way to pursue a former president of the United States and perhaps a future president of the United States,” she noted.
“I want to tell [special counsel] Jack Smith there are two systems of justice because I could have in 2017 gone to the Justice Department and pursued an investigation into Hillary Clinton and found as damning statements about why she eliminated 30,000 emails, why she kept an unsecured server in her basement and why she beat her phone up with a hammer. I could have brought just as damning an indictment,” she added.
DiGenova, meanwhile, told Newsmax he was very disappointed with lawyers “on both sides of this case,” adding that Trump’s new legal team should “file a series of motions in front of the court about prosecutorial misconduct, the illegality of the underlying charges and all the things you need to file in a case like this because jury selection in Florida is going to be a lot better for the president than it would have been in the District of Columbia.”
Another former top Justice Department official who served during the Trump administration has found at least one fatal flaw with the indictment, should the federal judge in the case decide to consider it.
Jeffrey Clark, who served as an assistant attorney general in the Trump administration, said on Friday after reading through the indictment that there is something on page three that is troubling for the prosecution.
According to the indictment, Trump allegedly showed classified documents to a number of people who did not have the proper security clearances on at least two separate occasions. The DOJ alleges that both instances took place at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Details regarding one of the alleged instances were leaked to CNN.
The network reported on June 2 that federal prosecutors had “obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.”
Naturally, the network did not reveal its source for the leak.
On Friday, Clark noted on Twitter that the leak to the media is grounds for having the case thrown out.
“I’m beginning to read the indictment against Trump,” he wrote. “But even three pages in, it’s clear that the leaks that preceded the indictment are far too close to what is actually being pleaded by DOJ to be a coincidence.”
“For example, in paragraph 6a on page 3, we hear about the recording of the Bedminster call, which the MSNBC’s of the world have been beating a dead horse about for quite a while based on such leaks. This means that Trump lawyers could not possibly be the source of the leaks,” Clark continued.
“Ergo, the leaks are coming from DOJ,” he said. “They must be investigated and punished. Also, this is grounds for granting a motion highlighting jury pool poisoning and dismissing the indictment before it reaches even its one-month birthday.”
