Danny Wild-USA TODAY Sports
Former President Donald Trump’s best defense to the 38-count indictment brought against him by the Justice Department may turn out to be the decision by DOJ to have brought the case in Florida rather than Washington, D.C.
The case against Trump looks strong based on the indictment’s compelling detail of Trump’s alleged mishandling of national defense documents and efforts to obstruct justice. Evidence referenced in the charging documents include text messages from Trump’s co-defendant and personal valet, Walt Nauta, audio of Trump himself seemingly admitting he knew he could not de-classify documents once he left the Presidency, as well the notes of Trump’s own lawyer with all of it woven into a narrative that seeks to explain to the court and American public why the case is not about mere sloppy document management. Thus far the defenses put forth by Trump and his legal team fail to impress.
The legal defenses—I’m not counting Trump’s various insults directed at Special Counsel Jack Smith as legal defenses—thus far appear to fall into two buckets: prosecutorial misconduct and supposed de-classification of documents. The prosecutorial misconduct may be based upon reports that prosecutor Jay Bratt, Chief of the DOJ’s Counterintelligence section, may have engaged in conversation with Nauta’s defense lawyer, Stanley Woodward, that included bringing up Woodward’s application to become a judge.