Trump lawyers say Mar-a-Lago classified documents contained info on calls with foreign leaders
Rachel Schilke
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Lawyers of former President Donald Trump informed the House Intelligence Committee that some of the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago contained memos of calls with foreign leaders, stating the discovery of these documents says more about the White House’s institutional processes than any “criminal intent” by Trump.
The letter, addressed to Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) and sent to committee members and other congressional leaders on Wednesday, criticized the Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration for their inconsistency in handling the classified documents compared to those discovered in President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence‘s possession.
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The letter stated that attorneys Jim Trusty and Tim Parlatore were able to review the 15 boxes given to the NARA earlier in the year and the agency had put “placeholder inserts” in place of classified documents that were removed.
The lawyers claimed Trump had less time than his predecessors to gather and properly store documents and that it is likely staff members were responsible for their placement among the things taken to Mar-a-Lago.
“The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls,” the lawyers wrote. “This organization of materials (i.e., schedule of calls for the day, insert page for briefing sheet to prepare for the call, newspapers from the same day) indicates that the White House staff simply swept all documents from the President’s desk and other areas into boxes, where they have resided ever since.”
The lawyers said the DOJ is the “wrong agency” to investigate the handling of these documents and that the department “should be ordered to stand down,” claiming the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or the House Intelligence Committee should have spearheaded the investigation instead.
They added that the DOJ took a path of “aggressive combativeness” and, in doing so, “compromised the evidence, constitutional rights, and, in many instances, the professional ethics of its prosecutors.”
“The improper involvement of DOJ in what should have been an administrative investigation of the mishandling or spillage of documents with classified markings set the matter on the wrong course and, in the current political environment, Attorney General Merrick Garland and DOJ predictably chose to pursue this as a criminal investigation,” the lawyers wrote.
Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to handle the investigation into Trump’s classified documents. Smith is also serving as special counsel for the department’s investigation into the former president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
However, the lawyers told Turner they do not believe Pence, Biden, or Trump should be criminally investigated for the classified documents. Instead, Congress should work to shore up the transitional process and transfer procedure of documents.
“Please know that despite the differences in the cases, we do not believe that any of these three matters should be handled by DOJ as a criminal case,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Rather, the stakeholders to these matters should set aside political differences and work together to remediate this issue and help to enhance our national security in the process.”
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Trump’s lawyers’ statements echo the chairman himself. Last week, Turner blasted the Justice Department for being “disingenuous” on the classified documents scandals. He claimed the DOJ was not being forthcoming about the investigation despite reports that the department had agreed to grant the “Gang of Eight,” of which Turner is a member, access to the documents.
After reviewing the index of documents discovered, Turner said he had not seen anything among Trump’s trove that was an “imminent” national security threat.