Former President Donald Trump recently took the advice of a person with no formal legal training. It has come to light that the person told the former president he was allowed to retain government documents, according to the Washington Post.
Donald Trump could have avoided the controversy
On Wednesday, the Post revealed a mind-boggling story about how Trump passed up multiple opportunities that could have avoided the current legal peril in which he finds himself.
Trump was arraigned on Tuesday in a Miami federal courtroom on 37 counts stemming from his handling of government documents after he left office. The Department of Justice alleges he willfully took classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructed the government’s efforts to recover them. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
According to Post’s report, in the fall of last year, Trump attorney Christopher Kise “wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president.”
It has been revealed that Trump rejected the idea, instead choosing to listen to lawyers and other advisers who urged him to take a more combative approach toward the DOJ. The report further said Trump repeatedly rejected otherwise sound advice from his attorneys while seeking the counsel of Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, a right-wing activist organization. Despite the name of his group, Fitton has no formal legal background whatsoever.
The Post reported:
“Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Republican talk show personality Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said.”
The publication caught up with Fitton who declined to discuss the details of his advice to Trump, but had words for his legal team.
“I think what is lacking is the lawyers saying, ‘I took this to be obstruction,’” Fitton said. “Where is the conspiracy? I don’t understand any of it. I think this is a trap. They had no business asking for the records… and they’ve manufactured an obstruction charge out of that. There are core constitutional issues that the indictment avoids, and the obstruction charge seems weak to me.”
The Post stated that several Trump advisers blame Fitton for giving the former president bad advice.
Even conservative legal minds say Trump had no business retaining documents generated by the government. Jonathan Turley called the indictment and the evidence in it “damaging,” while former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr said the ex-president is “toast” if even just half of the government’s allegations are true
