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‘Self-Inflicted Wound’: Experts Stunned After Trump’s Late-Night Release of Incredibly Incriminating NARA Document

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Former President Donald Trump reportedly released a new document very late Monday night that legal experts believe is incredibly damning.

Far-right writer John Solomon, who is one of Donald Trump’s official representatives for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), released a May 10 letter on his JustTheNews.com website.

Solomon released a letter from NARA to Trump’s lawyers.

“As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President’s representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022,” the letter read. “In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials. NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them.”

Experts were stunned.

“Yikes,” tweeted Tufts Prof. Daniel Drezner. Washington Post reporter Olivier Knox said, “this is incredible.”

Attorney Bradley Moss wondered, “Does [John Solomon] realize how bad that letter is for Trump?”

“Trump not only had classified records at Mar-a-Lago, not only had TS/SCI classified records, he had Special Access Program classified information,” Moss explained. “Those are our most sensitive secrets. They were sitting in a damn basement.”

READ MORE: Revealed: Trump Had Hundreds of Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago Including Set With ‘Highest Level of Classification’

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said, “The letter also confirms that Trump was on notice that the documents he possessed were federal government property and that he needed to return them to the government’s possession. Very uphill battle for Trump’s team.”

Justin Baragona, a correspondent for The Daily Beast, explained, “The best part of this is that John Solomon posted the letter because he thinks it is extraordinarily damning for the Biden White House. (Or he’s at least trying to preemptively frame it that way for Trumpworld.)”

“Also John Solomon refers to Trump as ‘the man Joe Biden beat in the 2020 election,'” Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) expert Jason Leopold wrote.

“This is quite a damning letter,” he concluded.

But attorney Teri Kanefield tried to put herself in the shoes of the man who released the letter, purportedly on Trump’s behalf.

“I’m trying to figure out why John Solomon thought this letter would help Trump,” Kanefield wrote. “I’m stumped.”

University of Law Prof. Steve Vladeck wrote, “The May 10 letter from NARA is damning to former President Trump on any number of levels — not the least of which is the lack of any reference to a claim by Trump’s representatives that he had *declassified* any of the classified materials that were quite specifically at issue.”

“It’s also telling that, even though this letter really hurts the Trump version of events, it wasn’t released by the Biden Administration or NARA. It was released by Trump’s own team—both a self-inflicted wound and further proof of how the government has been playing by the rules,” Vladeck added.

 

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Trump Lawyers in Classified Docs Case Quit Hours After Indictment: Report

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Attorneys representing Donald Trump in the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s prosecution of the former president on what reportedly are seven categories of federal felonies have resigned from representing him, just hours after a grand jury indicted their client.

“Two lawyers who represented Donald Trump in the months before he was indicted on federal charges over his handling of classified documents quit working for him Friday morning,” CNBC reports.

“This morning we tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation,” Trump attorneys Jim Trusty (photo) and John Rowley said in a joint statement, according to CNN’s Alayna Treene.

“The attorneys,” CNBC also reported, “did not explain in detail why they had resigned, other than to say that ‘this is a logical moment’ to do given his indictment Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami.”

READ MORE: ‘Disgraced’ Trump-Appointed Florida Judge Initially Assigned to Oversee Ex-President’s Criminal Case: Report

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, “Trump announces on Truth Social that Todd Blanche will be his criminal defense attorney in the Mar-a-Lago docs case with another firm yet to be named. Jim Trusty and John Rowley are out.”

This is far from the first time Trump’s lawyers have quit.

Less than one month ago, as Alternet reported, “Timothy Parlatore, an attorney for Donald Trump, made a major announcement on Wednesday, May 17: He is leaving the former president’s legal team.”

Trusty appeared on CNN just Thursday night, to defend Trump.

Watch video below or at this link.

This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. 

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‘Disgraced’ Trump-Appointed Florida Judge Initially Assigned to Oversee Ex-President’s Criminal Case: Report

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A federal judge whose highly-controversial rulings favoring Donald Trump were derided by legal experts and judges on a higher court, has been initially assigned to the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s criminal case against the ex-president, who appointed her to the bench three years ago.

Judge Aileen Cannon, known for agreeing to Trump’s request by assigning a special master to review the entirety of federal government documents the FBI retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last summer during the execution of a search and seizure warrant will, at least for now, oversee the government’s case allegedly charging Donald Trump with seven different felony categories in its classified documents probe, according to ABC News.

“The summons sent to former President Donald Trump and his legal team late Thursday indicates that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will be assigned to oversee his case, at least initially, according to sources briefed on the matter,” ABC News reports.

READ MORE: Trump Lawyers Blindsided by Existence of Bombshell Recording – ‘They Don’t Know How to Defend This’: Maggie Haberman

“Cannon’s apparent assignment would add yet another unprecedented wrinkle to a case involving the first federal charges against a former president: Trump appointed Cannon to the federal bench in 2019, meaning that, if Trump is ultimately convicted, she would be responsible for determining the sentence – which may include prison time – for the man who elevated her to the role.”

Cannon, agreeing to Trump’s request to appoint a special master last September, also halted the Dept. of Justice’s use of those materials, which included at least one hundred classified documents, in its criminal investigation into Trump.

Harvard University professor emeritus of constitutional law, Laurence Tribe, called Judge Cannon’s special master decision “utterly lawless,” and said: “She has disgraced her position as an Article III judge.”

ABC News notes that “Legal experts [had] accused Cannon of handing Trump a series of head-scratching victories over the course of those proceedings,” and added, “Cannon’s order was ultimately thrown out in its entirety by an 11th Circuit Court of appeals panel, which found she overstepped in exercising her jurisdiction in the probe.”

The 11th Circuit issued a scathing rebuke of Judge’ Cannon’s decision to appoint the special master. One week later, without explanation or reasoning, she overruled the special master’s decision and extended deadlines – decisions which favored Donald Trump.

RELATED: ‘Pure Essence of Judicial Corruption’: Morning Joe Panelists ‘Stunned’ by Cannon’s Ruling on Classified Docs

Cannon is not the only judge whose name appears on the summons.

“In addition to Cannon, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s name also appeared on the summons sent to Trump on Thursday, the sources said,” ABC adds. “Reinhart, who was sworn in as a magistrate judge in 2018, is also familiar with the proceedings against Trump: he signed off on the initial search warrant of Mar-a-Lago last year and later ruled to unseal the search affidavit – decisions that made him the target of antisemitic jabs on the internet.”

The New York Times in August of last year reported, “in a segment on Fox News, a host showed a manipulated photo that appeared to show Judge Reinhart seated on a plane with Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. [Jeffrey] Epstein’s companion who had been convicted last year of aiding Mr. Epstein in sexually abusing minors.”

Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News host, the following day tweeted: “Last night while subbing for Tucker Carlson, we showed you an image of Judge Bruce Reinhart w/ Ghislaine Maxwell that was sourced on screen to a meme pulled from Twitter & wasn’t real. This depiction never took place & we wanted to make clear that we were showing a meme in jest.”

READ MORE: SCOTUS ‘Surprise’ Voting Rights Decision Could – and Did – Have Big Implications for Democrats, Legal Experts Say

The Times noted “the scrutiny of Judge Reinhart has also prompted the local authorities to step up security. His synagogue canceled a Friday night Shabbat service last week in response to multiple antisemitic threats, and the police in his neighborhood said officers had intensified patrols near his house.”

Professor of Law Joyce Vance, an NBC News/MSNBC contributor and former U.S. Attorney responded to the news of Cannon’s assignment. Pointing to an earlier case as precedent, Vance says: “This is persuasive authority that Judge Cannon must step aside if the case falls to her as a permanent assignment. Her court & certainly the 11th [Circuit] won’t tolerate the damage it would do to their credibility if she failed to voluntarily recuse.”

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Trump Lawyers Blindsided by Existence of Bombshell Recording – ‘They Don’t Know How to Defend This’: Maggie Haberman

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CNN on Friday morning obtained a bombshell transcript of a recording in which former President Donald Trump boasts of retaining “secret” military information that he never declassified while he was president.

Appearing on CNN shortly after this news broke, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman revealed that the former president’s team was essentially blindsided by this recording’s existence.

“I don’t think they quite know how to defend this… from what we have heard,” she said. “They were… startled by the existence of this tape. This tape was something that they learned existed when this aide to Trump testified. The prosecutors were already in possession of this tape. They didn’t get it from the aide, although it appears the aide had a copy when it was subpoenaed later, but this is has been described to us by multiple sources… as a really problematic piece of evidence for Trump.”

Haberman predicted that the recording’s existence would not change the Trump legal team’s overall defense strategy, however.

READ MORE: ‘He’s just not that smart’: Trump buried by Morning Joe for handing investigators all they need

“I think they are going to stick that their line: ‘He says things, he didn’t mean it a certain way,'” she said. “I am sure they can come up with all kinds of explanations for why he used the language he used. But it’s on tape.”

Trump is due in court in Miami next week to face seven felony counts related to his handling of top-secret government documents.

Watch the video below or at this link.

 

Image via Shutterstock

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