Fox’s Jonathan Turley Calls Special Counsel Appointment a ‘Self-Inflicted Wound’ By Trump: DOJ Must Feel ‘There Was a There There’
Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley argued “there are real risks here for the former president” upon news that Attorney General Merrick Garland was appointing a special counsel to oversee probes into Donald Trump.
“It’s really Mar-a-Lago that I would be most worried about if I were on the Trump team and that team may have to change,” Turley argued, noting that while the newly appointed special counsel, Jack Smith, will probe both Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his retention of documents from the White House – the latter is where he sees real legal danger for Trump.
“Once a special counsel is in the field, it could complicate matters because everyone on that team who has overlap with these controversies, whether it’s the riot or Mar-a-Lago, are going to be potential witnesses,” Turley continued, adding:
So it will complicate things as well on the trump side, not just the Garland side. One of the things we will be looking for is whether the attorney general gives any sense of the time frame that he’s looking at.
My guess is that he won’t. This should move more quickly than the Mueller investigation. If it’s Mar-a-Lago, this is a very finite set of crimes, finite amount of evidence, and finite number of witnesses. It should not take an exhaustive type of investigation. There are real risks here for the former president.
Statements made to the FBI about the presence of classified evidence at Mar-a-Lago.
“This was a self-inflicted wound and it could be potentially charged and so I think that’s where most of us will be looking in terms of the special counsel but Garland may give us a better idea of the scope of this investigation,” Turley added, speaking just before Garland announced Smith as the special counsel.
“The appointment of a special counsel adds another level of sort of political intrigue about everything, because it’s not just the DOJ that’s investigating now, it’s a special counsel. And we remember through Mueller and obviously, other special counsels that there seems to be a greater focus of attention on the part of the media when a special counsel is involved,” added anchor John Roberts.
“Yeah. I mean, this is sort of like the battle of Coral Sea. There’s torpedoes and shells flying in every direction,” Turley replied, adding:
I mean, you have the house is just ramping up on an investigation and Garland is really at the epicenter of that. They have a lot of questions and I think legitimate questions about Hunter Biden and Garland’s steadfast refusal thus far to appoint a special counsel.
And so I think that he’s going to be busy himself in the coming weeks, but this is going to clear his desk a bit. But there are going to be critics that say, look, you’re investigating the Hunter Biden matter and the president is all over that record in terms of percentages of deals, etc.. It’s not that we question the appointment of special counsel here, but why not a special counsel there? And so those questions are going to arise.
“But I think he’ll get a lot of support for saying, particularly after Trump announced, this is a time where he needs to step back a bit and appoint a special counsel,” Turley continued.
“I would note one more thing, John, and that is you wouldn’t have appointed a special counsel unless they felt that there was a there there. I mean, Garland clearly believes that there’s a potential for criminal charges,” Turley explained, concluding:
That’s why most of us are looking at Mar-a-Lago as the focus here. That is not good news for Donald Trump or the Trump team. They can’t count on this thing going beyond 2024. This is a much, as I said, more narrow and concrete set of facts than what Mueller was dealing with in the Russian collusion investigation.
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