Donald Trump’s legal troubles may have just gotten bigger. A source spoke with the Washington Post on Friday and revealed that the Justice Department is asking a federal judge to hold former President Donald Trump’s legal team in contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena issued this summer ordering him to return all classified documents in his possession.
Trump’s legal team has refused to designate a custodian of records to sign a document attesting that all classified materials have been returned to the federal government.
The former president’s team has taken the position that such a request is unreasonable.
“President Trump and his counsel continue to cooperate and be transparent, despite the unprecedented, illegal, and unwarranted attacks by the weaponized Department of Justice,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to the Post.
Trump is under investigation for three potential crimes, including mishandling classified documents, obstruction and destruction of government records.
“What the DOJ is trying to do is simply get an answer… from some person to say yes, you have all of [the classified documents]… and I can’t begin to imagine how long this has taken to finally percolate to the stage where DOJ is asking for this,” former FBI official Peter Strzok told MSNBC.
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman predicted that attorneys like Bobb and fellow Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran “will point the fingers at others and ultimately Trump in seeking to excuse their noncompliance.”
“Part of the dynamic with the Trump Team contempt motion is that the lawyers are afraid to sign certifications of compliance, given that their client can’t be trusted,” Litman wrote on Twitter. “There’s a poetic justice to the fact that Team Trump can’t even comply with a subpoena, a simple act which defendants, and anyone else, do every day, because of fault lines leading in all directions to Trump’s dishonesty,” he added.
“If you represented Trump, you wouldn’t want to certify under oath that he returned all the classified materials either,” quipped former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.
