A former top prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller is arguing the Justice Department could be bringing a “substantial criminal case” against former President Donald Trump related to the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago.
Andrew Weissmann, who served as FBI general counsel under former President Barack Obama and criticized Mueller and fellow team members for not going far enough in pursuing Trump during the special counsel investigation, argued Tuesday that Trump may now be in significant legal jeopardy after a flurry of stories Monday.
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“There was a lot of news,” Weissmann, now an MSNBC analyst, said on Morning Joe. “None of it was good for the president.”
Weissmann specifically pointed to a New York Times story that contended the National Archives and Records Administration initially retrieved 150 documents with classified markings from Trump in January, according to anonymous sources, and has recovered more than 300 classified records total, including evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago in early August.
“The New York Times reporting I found most interesting because of one particular sentence, which is that several sources said that when the archives were trying to get documents back, that it was the former president, Donald Trump, who personally reviewed the boxes in deciding what to return. And that means he also decided what not to return,” Weissmann said Tuesday.
“So that is incredibly damning,” he added. “If you are a prosecutor, you really look for evidence of what the former president did personally. And if the DOJ either knows about or is soon to interview those people who were sources for the New York Times, they’re going to have a substantial criminal case.”
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Weissmann also pointed to Trump filing a Monday lawsuit seeking an order from a judge to appoint a special master and stop the Justice Department from further review of the information it had seized from his Florida home until the special master is appointed.
Trump’s team argued, “We seek judicial assistance in the aftermath of an unprecedented and unnecessary raid on President Trump’s home.”
DOJ spokesman Anthony Coley said the Mar-a-Lago search warrant “was authorized by a federal court” and that the Justice Department will respond in court.
“I think that the motion that the former president made yesterday, where he asked for a special master, has a fatal flaw in it because one of the things that he doesn’t address is: Nothing needs to be sifted because none of the documents are actually the former president’s,” Weissmann argued Tuesday. “These all belong, whether classified or unclassified, to the National Archives.”
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The items seized by the FBI earlier this month reportedly included “various classified/[top secret]/[sensitive compartmented information] documents,” four “miscellaneous top secret documents,” three “miscellaneous secret documents,” two “miscellaneous confidential documents,” and one “confidential document.”
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart suggested Monday that he may allow the Justice Department to keep the FBI affidavit behind its Mar-a-Lago raid mostly sealed, though he rejected the DOJ’s arguments that the justification underpinning the “unprecedented search” should be kept fully hidden.
The search warrant application cover sheet, unsealed last week, provided more details on what the Justice Department was looking for.
The records show Trump was being investigated under 18 U.S.C. 793, part of the Espionage Act, and said it was related to “willful retention of national defense information.” The unsealed cover sheet pointed to 18 U.S.C. 2071, specifically the “concealment or removal of government records,” as well as 18 U.S.C. 1519, specifically related to “obstruction of federal investigation.”
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Weissmann made headlines in 2020 when Mueller was forced to defend his Russia investigation against criticism.
“It is not surprising that members of the Special Counsel’s Office did not always agree, but it is disappointing to hear criticism of our team based on incomplete information,” Mueller said in the rare public statement.
