Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday that a newly unsealed portion of the Department of Justice affidavit behind the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago suggests former President Donald Trump helped to conceal the existence of more documents at his private home.
Vance appeared to be referring to the certified letter that former OAN host and Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, reportedly signed declaring all materials taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the National Archives. That statement turned out to be false as over 100 more classified documents were recovered from Trump’s possession in early August, according to the FBI.
On Tuesday, a federal magistrate judge further unsealed the affidavit from the Department of Justice used to obtain a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago.
“This does in large part make the information that’s been revealed consistent between the D.C. and the Florida investigations,” Vance began telling Wallace as she asked the current law professor to weigh in.
“If there’s one takeaway here and Nicolle, and it’s not certain, but there’s more of an implication in this newly released information that the former president did play a role in the provision of information about documents to whoever the lawyer who certified this information to the Justice Department,” Vance continued, adding:
There’s this implication that documents were stored in storage areas and that there was nothing in personal offices and that
seems like the sort of information that would have been very likely to come from the former president
“So this gives DOJ more of a basis to move forward. And of course, because this involves the grand jury, subpoenas are not documents that were ultimately seized in the search. DOJ is free to move forward with inquiries to witnesses without violating Judge Cannon’s order,” Vance continued.
“David, Tom Winter is a very meticulous reporter. This is his beat. Joyce is a very careful lawyer. I am neither of those things. I want to put it a little more bluntly. Is this more evidence or more information that suggests that Trump lied about what remained and Trump lied about where it was?” Wallace then asked David Laufman, the former Former Chief of DOJ’s Counterintelligence Section.
“I think it’s more probable than not that Trump lied to his lawyers, caused them to make false statements to the Department of Justice, and giving the lawyers the benefit of the doubt. Because I’m a lawyer, they like to think lawyers don’t and typically lie knowingly to the United States government,” Laufman responded, adding:
And during a criminal investigation, they may have exercised some modicum of due diligence. But the problem with being a lawyer for Donald Trump is that no lawyer can exercise client control. No lawyer can ultimately get the truth out of their client when their client’s name is Donald Trump
“I think it’s more likely than not that he lied to them knowing that they were going to transmit those lies to the government,” he concluded.
Watch the full clip above via MSNBC