(CNSNews.com) - Trump attorney James Trusty told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he doesn’t recognize this DOJ despite having spent 17 years working for them, because they are “consistently leaking” and they don’t respect the privilege that former President Trump holds.
Trusty called it “nonsense” that the special counsel is looking at obstruction of justice as a crime in this situation because investigators suspect that boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes.
“There's been a campaign of leaks from DOJ unlike anything I've ever seen. I was a prosecutor for 27 years. I spent 17 at this Department of Justice. I don't recognize it anymore. They are consistently leaking. The angle they're pushing on the obstruction is to try to create some sort of daylight between Joe Biden's possession of documents and President Trump's, and it's not going to work,” he said.
“I mean, they have literally put in everybody to grand jury you can imagine. They don't respect any privilege that President Trump holds, and it's desperately trying to find an obstruction angle that just isn't there,” Trump’s lawyer said.
During an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump said that he would have the right to say, “‘Bring me some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House. I'd like to look at them.’"
NBC’s Chuck Todd asked where in the law does it say that Trump has a right to those classified documents according to Presidential Records Act.
Trusty pointed out that Trump would have the right to look at the classified documents from his time as president and deem something as personal that had been classified, under the Presidential Records Act.
“No. Well, you're right, but I think you're misinterpreting the Presidential Records Act. You notice, he didn't say, ‘I did this. I possessed it.’ He said, ‘I would have the right.’ He is correct, under the Presidential Records Act, which is a non-criminal statute. That's the key,” Trusty said.
“DOJ and political bureaucrats at NARA criminalized something using criminal tools: grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, for a statute that says, ‘Look. Ex-presidents work with NARA, work with them for years, figure out what stuff they get.’ It took 18 years, I think, for Nixon's tapes to finally get to NARA. So, there's a delay built into the process, as they negotiate in good faith,” he said.
“In this case, NARA was hypersensitive, immediately trying to pounce on President Trump to say he's holding onto things he's not entitled to, but the remedy for all of that, if you have that fight between the archivists and the former president, is civil litigation, and they've jumped right past that with a very happy and willing DOJ,” Trusty said.