Donald Trump’s grand jury confession
By all accounts Donald Trump’s Monday interview on Fox News was a disaster for him, for multiple reasons. The fact that Bret Baier went so hard at him is a sign that Fox thinks Trump is toast. And Trump’s series of incriminating answers will have Jack Smith up half the night rewatching the tape to figure out what all they can use. One key moment may be the most damning of all.
There was a moment where Trump appeared to say that he willfully ignored a grand jury subpoena for the boxes containing classified documents because he wanted to go through them and remove personal items first. I say “appeared” because Trump is becoming more incoherent than ever. But it very much sounded like a confession to willfully ignoring a grand jury subpoena, which is a near automatic ticket to prison.
Trump could try to make the reasonable doubt argument at trial that his former attorneys never showed him the subpoena, or that he didn’t understand what all the subpoena included. It would be nonsense, but reasonable doubt defenses are all about trying to get the jury to buy that there’s a small chance that your nonsensical excuse just might be true.
But Trump just blew all of that by confessing that he willfully defied the subpoena. Worse, his rationale for defying the subpoena doesn’t fit with his actions. If he’d legitimately felt that the subpoena deadline didn’t give him enough time to sort through the boxes before turning them over, he could have requested an extension. Instead he didn’t do any of that, and simply lied about still having the boxes.
In other words Trump just nailed himself on the obstruction charges. That’s a federal prison sentence right there. Trump’s confession also helps nail him on the underlying Espionage Act charges, because he’s (once again) admitting that he knew he was in possession of classified documents in those boxes. It’s ironic that Fox News may have just handed Jack Smith one of his most valuable pieces of evidence to date. This interview will absolutely be used against Trump at trial.
