'Trump has learned just how much his lawyers spilled': Expert breaks down new court filing
Donald Trump late Friday night slammed Special Counsel Jack Smith in a new court filing, saying the prosecutor's "demanded deadlines" are "detached from reality."
Specifically, Trump's attorneys filed an opposition to Smith's request that the court force Trump to make it known whether he plans to utilize an advice-of-counsel defense in the Mar-a-Lago case involving classified documents. Legal experts say the special counsel hopes to make Trump answer the question, a move many said was an attempt to obtain key attorney communications that would otherwise be covered by attorney-client privilege.
"The Special Counsel’s Office has repeatedly demanded deadlines in this case that are detached from reality and practice, and this Motion is no different," Trump's attorneys write in the new filing. "The 60 days requested in the Motion would give the Office more time to 'investigate' an advice-of-counsel defense than the Office proposed to give President Trump to review approximately 1.3 million pages of discovery and file Rule 12(b) motions."
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National security attorney Bradley P. Moss said Trump simply "opposes efforts to make him decide if he will rely on an 'advice of counsel' defense in the documents case."
"Basically, they’re just saying it’s not necessary yet to declare it," the lawyer said, adding that there are two parts of the filing that stand out to him.
"Two interesting tidbits. As part of discovery, it appears Trump has learned just how much his lawyers spilled to the grand jury. And it’s a lot," Moss wrote. He highlighted a part of the filing in which Trump says the Smith team "fails to inform the Court that they have much more information regarding legal advice provided to President Trump than in a typical case."
The second part, Moss said, is that "Trump is foreshadowing introducing classified evidence at trial via CIPA."
"Gee, why would the evidence be classified if he declassified everything?" the expert added.