Maggie Haberman Says Trump Team Letter on Criminal Probes Shows ‘They Are Taking This Incredibly Seriously’
CNN analyst Maggie Haberman said the Trump legal team’s letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland shows “they’re taking this incredibly seriously.”
The news of that cryptic letter ex-President Donald Trump’s team sent to AG Garland requesting a meeting set tongues wagging Tuesday.
Along with some other political shots, the letter from Trump attorneys John Rowley and Jim Trusty said “We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors.”
On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN Primetime, Haberman told host Abby Phillip that Trump has entered into a new phase of “real-world consequences legally,” and that the letter reflects Trump’s worry about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Justice Department probes into Trump’s mishandling of classified information under the Espionage Act and his conduct surrounding the January 6 insurrection:
FISCHER: So, don’t expect Donald Trump to hide away from this. He’s going to absolutely leverage this, as a part of his campaign, and the media is definitely going to follow it. I mean, we saw this, when he had his indictment, a few weeks ago. There will be wall-to-wall coverage of this thing, and that will drown out the other candidates.
HABERMAN: It will. But I will just make the point that we are seeing, real-world consequences, with him, legally, on this that we haven’t seen before. He was found liable, in the civil trial. The judge’s ruling, today, I think, is not insignificant. He does fear, I think, certain legal consequences more than others.
PHILLIP: So, we just got word that Trump’s lawyers have requested a meeting, with Attorney General Garland, in that classified documents case.
This is the Special Counsel case that Maggie, you have said is one of the ones that he is the most concerned about. What do you make of that?
HABERMAN: Well, I make of it that they assume that there’s going to be a charging decision near, because all signs are that these cases, both the January 6 investigations, and the documents investigation, are wrapping up, or at least coming close to being wrapped up, and that they want to get in their say, before anything might happen. I don’t know how this will be received. I don’t know whether it’ll be taken. But yes, it speaks to the fact that they are taking this incredibly seriously, and want to deal with it.
PHILLIP: Yes.
RAY: It also means that it’s decision ultimately, notwithstanding the Special Counsel regulations —
PHILLIP: Right.
RAY: — that is one that the Attorney General himself has to make, which raises in the context of an active political campaign, with two announced candidates, that you are having the Attorney General, appointed by one presidential candidate, making a charging decision, in connection with a criminal case, as to a political candidate, for the other party.
It raises the question, therefore, which I think is what the lawyers are teeing up, and one of the questions that I think will be out there eventually, before too long, is the question of recusal.
Watch above via CNN Primetime.
