Donald Trump's latest filing in his Florida criminal case claiming his prosecution is politically motivated and unfair won't go well for him, argues Andrew Weissmann, a former Mueller senior prosecutor, during an appearance on MSNBC.
The most crucial part of the case, host Nicolle Wallace said, lies in the national security risk it posed, demonstrating the former president's lack of care for the individuals who may have risked their lives to disclose the information to the United States. Trump's "disdain for the documents and everyone and everything and every life risked to gather them is always stunning to me when we come back to this one," Wallace said, recalling the August 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid.
Weissmann agreed, saying that a lack of understanding of what prompts someone to share classified intelligence with the U.S. is what leads a person to disregard the materials' safeguarding.
"That lack of empathy is something that leads to this danger to national security, and I think that in terms of the reason for why you saw this extraordinary step is precisely because anybody in the White House or the executive branch would be thinking, 'Our obligation to the public is to recover this'," he explained.
Weissmann went on to describe likely outcomes of Trump's filing: "One, just the enormous way it's going to backfire. This is going to be denied, and it is going to be denied in a judicial decision; if not by Judge [Aileen] Cannon, she will get reversed. The 11th Circuit [Court of Appeals] is going to deny it, " Weissmann told Wallace. "There is no way that this is going to be viewed as selective prosecution. [Trump], of course, will say, 'Ignore those courts' — pretty hard with the 11th Circuit. I mean, those are his people."
Second, he noted, both special counsel Jack Smith and special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated President Joe Biden's retention of classified documents but did not charge him with anything, agreed that the nature of Trump's conduct is different. "It's going to be hard to smear Jack Smith when you have Rob Hur saying the same thing," Weissman said.
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