Maggie Haberman: Contempt Charge For Trump Team May Still Be On Table After Hearing On Classified Docs Probe
L: Mario Tama/Getty Images
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman pointedly flagged reporting that suggests a contempt charge for former President Donald Trump’s team may still be on the table even after a hearing in which a judge did not order that punishment.
Haberman has dropped scoop after scoop about some of the biggest stories of the year, including on the bombshell search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home, and the ensuing investigation. In her latest, she takes on reports from multiple outlets that appear to suggest that U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell has denied the Justice Department’s demand for a contempt finding against Team Trump.
But Haberman flagged a key distinction between denying and delaying such a decision, writing on Twitter “The judge was said to tell the two sides to try to resolve their dispute among themselves. It was not clear whether the judge left open the possibility of such a contempt ruling, or another action, at a later date.”
Haberman’s sources, in her telling, were much more passive in their characterization of the hearing than other reports suggest:
A federal judge in Washington on Friday ended a hearing without acting on a Justice Department request to find representatives of Donald J. Trump’s post-presidential office in contempt of court for failing to comply fully with a subpoena demanding that he return all classified documents he had taken with him when he left office, two people familiar with the matter said.
They said that the judge left it to the Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s team to resolve the department’s concerns about whether the former president might have more classified documents at his properties after more than a year of efforts by the federal government to retrieve them.
It was unclear after the closed-door proceeding if the judge, Beryl A. Howell, had left open the possibility of ruling on the matter at a future date. Several news outlets filed a letter asking the judge to unseal the proceedings, including The New York Times.
The flag from Haberman is significant in a few ways, not the least of which is that Trump is very likely to see it — and possibly react.
