The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Did Trump Just Admit to Obstruction?
We’ve covered Donald Trump’s indictment over classified material, explained his legal peril, and noted his not guilty plea. And then Trump went on Fox News for an interview with Bret Baier, and, as is his wont, made things worse for himself. Political analyst Ed Morrissey explains:
The first rule of Federal Indictment Club is: you don’t talk about your case. And the second rule of Federal Indictment Club is: you don’t talk about your case, period. You hire a good lawyer or two and let them talk about your case in public. The surest way to help the prosecution is to go on television and make a damaging admission about the key element of a charge.
Sort of like … this:
He should not be commenting on this at all, as it makes him look worse. Has he ever made one of his legal issues better by talking about them in detail in interviews? pic.twitter.com/Gw0ts1l6OG
— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) June 19, 2023
He goes on to quote the transcript where Trump said, “I wanted to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out.” He didn’t do it because “I was very busy.” There is no “too busy” or “I need my stuff” clause that absolves anyone of complying with a subpoena. Morrissey writes:
Say what? That may not be quite the full Colonel Jessup in ‘A Few Good Men,’ but it certainly sounds like a tacit admission of deliberate obstruction in regard to the subpoena. Skip over the first 31 counts regarding the documents themselves in the indictment and go to counts 32 and 33, conspiracy to obstruct justice and withholding a record from a federal grand jury.
He quotes the indictment about how Trump “knowingly” work to “withhold a record, document, and other object from an official proceeding,” as well as “engage in misleading conduct” and “hide and conceal documents.” As Morrissey put it, Trump basically just “tacitly agree with the indictment’s allegation in attempting to justify his actions.”
You think Jack Smith and his attorneys are busy transcribing the whole interview at the moment? You’d better believe they are, and for good reason. Trump just made it almost impossible for a jury to believe any denial on these allegations, and his justification here would be damning in court. By talking publicly, Trump likely ruined a potential defense strategy for his attorneys, and now they will have to work around Trump’s public statement on national TV when this case comes to trial.
Trump as the defendant doesn’t have to testify, Morrissey notes, but “Trump put himself on national TV and let Bret Baier cross-examine him, in a way that prosecutors can use whether Trump agrees to testify or not.”
Now Smith and his team can play this to a jury, and Trump can’t stop it. Public admissions are admissible in court whether or not defendants choose to testify, and probably carry even more weight when they’re on videotape. (Even private admissions are admissible if direct witnesses to the admission are willing to testify to them.) Trump will almost certainly have to testify now to explain this away — and everyone can imagine how Trump will hold up under prosecutorial cross-examination.
This is a disaster for Trump’s legal team, assuming he can find attorneys who want to have to handle this mess.