On CNN Thursday, retired Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe reacted to the news that the Justice Department believes former President Donald Trump is hoarding more documents on his property — a development that experts believe is a sign prosecutors are seriously weighing charges against the former president.
“What do you think where the Justice Department might be headed?” asked anchor Anderson Cooper.
“It certainly suggests the Justice Department is closing in on indicting Donald Trump,” said Tribe. “Not simply for basically stealing top secret documents from the White House and secreting them in various locations … but also for violating the Espionage Act and, based on this recent reporting, obstruction of justice.”
Specifically, Tribe argued, the DOJ has evidence Trump is obstructing both a “national security inquiry” and a “criminal investigation.” “There are people whose lives are at stake if their identity has been revealed in some of these top secret documents, which clearly were marked ‘human resource.’ They were marked to indicate that they would reveal the identity or location of, basically, American spies abroad. They were marked signals intelligence. So this is very serious. And what I take these recent revelations to mean is that shortly after the midterm elections, indictments are likely to start flying.”
“You believe that the Department of Justice might actually indict the former president?” Cooper pressed him.
“I believe that it might well indict the former president for obstruction, for espionage,” said Tribe. “This is all quite apart from the possible indictment for seditious conspiracy and insurrection. I mean, it’s as though he is building a moat around Mar-a-Lago and then trying to swim in it himself. Basically, with every stroke he takes, with every move he makes, he is digging himself a deeper, deeper pit … his lawyers must be absolutely beside themselves because he makes matters worse. He says ‘I want my documents back.’ He brags about having taken them himself. Then he says the General Services Administration packed the boxes, but they deny it. You almost expect him to say my dog packed the boxes, except we know he doesn’t have a dog.”
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