Literally from the guy who is now testifying in DC...but but but
WHAT HAVE PROSECUTORS SAID IN TRUMP’S CASE?
Trump is accused of not only hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, but trying to hide them from investigators and working to block the government from clawing them back. Prosecutors have alleged that Trump showed off the documents to people who did not have security clearances to review them and enlisted others to help him hide records demanded by authorities.
Hur’s report says the differences between the two cases are “clear.” Unlike Biden — who cooperated with investigators, agreed to searches of his homes and sat for a voluntary interview — the allegations in Trump’s case present “serious aggravating facts,” Hur wrote.
“Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” the report said.
The report compared Trump’s alleged behavior with Biden’s, laying out the ways the president cooperated with the special counsel throughout the course of the investigation.
“In contrast, Mr. Biden alerted authorities, turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice in 2022 and 2023, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, permitted the seizure and review of handwritten notebooks he believed to be his personal property, and in numerous other ways cooperated with the investigation.”
For instance, prosecutors say, after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the records in May 2022, Trump asked his own lawyers if he could defy the request and said words to the effect of, “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” one of his lawyers described him as saying, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors allege that during the July 2021 meeting at Bedminster, Trump also waved around the classified attack plan to his guests. “This is secret information,” he said, according to a recording prosecutors have cited, claiming that, “as president I could have declassified it” but hadn’t.
Prosecutors
have also accused Trump of scheming with his valet,
Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, to try to conceal security camera footage from investigators after they issued a subpoena for it. Video from the property would ultimately play a significant role in the investigation because, prosecutors said, it captured Nauta moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room — including a day before an FBI visit to the property. The boxes were moved at Trump’s direction, the indictment alleges.