A former federal prosecutor suggested that two of Donald Trump’s attorneys who were involved in the former president’s failure to hand over classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate should probably “stop talking” and “best defense counsel you can possibly get.”
Andrew Weissmann made the recommendation on MSNBC in light of a Justice Department brief filed late Tuesday as part of its criminal investigation of the former president, whose Florida home was searched by the FBI earlier this month.
The search came after Trump’s team failed to return all the documents in June, when Justice Department officials visited the Florida resort in an attempt to satisfy a subpoena for the materials.
Two of Trump’s attorneys, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, met with the officials at the time, according to The New York Times, and at least one of them signed a written statement asserting that all material marked as classified and stored at the resort had been returned.
In Tuesday’s Justice Department filing, prosecutors said Trump’s counsel “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room” during that visit and gave officials no opportunity to confirm that no additional classified documents remained.
The FBI found additional sensitive materials at the site, prosecutors said, suggesting that Trump’s lawyers were obstructing the grand jury subpoena and investigation.
“Let’s role play,” Weissmann said on MSNBC. “I am now defense counsel, advising Corcoran and Bobb. I tell them: you need to withdraw as counsel and you need to get the best defense counsel you can possibly get. And you stop talking. Because they are clearly going to be interviewed. And at the very least they’re going to be witnesses on the issue.”
“They either themselves said that they did a thorough search, when in fact they didn’t ― which is perjury and obstruction,” he continued.
“Or, somebody told them that a thorough search had been done, i.e. Donald Trump, so I think it’s one or the other. So I don’t see how they continue to be counsel when at the very least, they will be witnesses and I say at the very least because as you say, they could be in worse trouble here.”