Trump Lawyers Send Strongly Worded Letter to Garland as Special Counsel Probe Appears to Be ‘Wrapping Up’

Trump’s attorneys sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday requesting a meeting related to the federal investigations spearheaded by special counsel Jack Smith.

Summary

Trump’s attorneys sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday requesting a meeting related to the federal investigations spearheaded by special counsel Jack Smith.

• “No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion,” lawyers John Rowley and James Trusty wrote in the letter.
• The letter “does not outline any specific allegations of wrongdoing by Smith and his team,” ABC News reported. “The request does not specifically detail what Trump’s legal team wants to discuss with the attorney general.”
• Smith was appointed in late 2022 by Garland to handle the investigations into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago home and a separate probe into Trump’s conduct related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
• The special counsel is reportedly nearly finished with his criminal investigation into the Mar-a-Largo documents case, and “Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
• Also on Tuesday, Justice Juan Merchan announced the date of Trump’s criminal “hush money” trial at a hearing where Trump attended remotely from Florida. The former President’s trial will begin on March 25, 2024, in the middle of the Republican presidential primaries.
• “They forced upon us a trial date of March 25th, right in the middle of the Primary season,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “It’s called ELECTION INTERFERENCE.”

• Axios noted the Smith investigation is “widely believed to pose the most serious threat to Trump’s freedom.” Ex-Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, for example, has said Trump is “very exposed” legally in the Mar-a-Lago case.
• The New York Times reported the letter to Garland from Trump’s attorneys “could be an attempt by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to lay down a marker toward asking Mr. Garland to recuse himself from involvement in whether Mr. Trump faces charges.”
• Politico covered how “the famously loud-mouthed former president” could talk his way into more legal trouble. Trump has “subjected himself to new legal troubles by repeatedly vilifying the writer E. Jean Carroll even after a jury found that he defamed her. And in his criminal case involving hush money payments to a porn star, Trump is under a judge’s strict order to avoid talking publicly about certain evidence. If he violates that order, he could be held in contempt.”

• According to the Wall Street Journal, “Prosecutors have pressed witnesses—some in multiple rounds of testimony—on questions that appeared to home in on specific elements Smith’s team would need to show to prove a crime, including those that speak to Trump’s intentions, and questions aimed at undermining potential defenses Trump could raise, they said.”
• The New York Post reported, “Prosecutors on Smith’s team reportedly have interviewed virtually every employee at Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate – in some cases, multiple times – in an effort to determine whether Trump had criminal intentions behind his failure to turn over sensitive documents from his time in the White House to the National Archives and Records Administration.”
• Smith is also charged with investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot. As Fox News noted, he has “examined whether Trump or other officials interfered with the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election, including the certification of the Electoral College vote on that day.”

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© Dominic Moore, 2023