Cassidy Hutchinson’s Story About Mark Meadows Burning Documents Indicates Obstruction of Justice, Legal Analysts Say
MSNBC legal analyst Leah Litman zeroed in on a story in Cassidy Hutchinson’s new book that claimed Mark Meadows smelled like a “bonfire” because of all the documents he burned for former President Donald Trump.
She appeared along with former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance and guest host Melissa Murray Monday evening.
“The story that she is telling is entirely consistent with prosecutors’ theories in basically all of the Trump cases, which is, in time and time again, Trump and his world tried to conceal evidence, whether it was before the election in violation of New York election law, whether it was in the lead-up to the election and in the aftermath of it, to conceal that there was no evidence of fraud and that Trump had lost the election,” Litman said. “Or whether it was hiding classified documents from the federal government after they begged for the president to return them. And so, this story is really of a piece with particularly obstruction of justice charges in the Florida case and really all of the other cases in which Trump world is currently implicated.”
Vance said prosecutors would require facts in the form of witnesses who could testify to the document burnings, but said the stories could have implications for the upcoming elections.
“So, something that this sort of storytelling does is it confirms our thinking that Trump’s regular modus operandi was to obstruct justice,” Vance said. “This isn’t just failure to follow protocol; in many ways, this is an effort to obscure evidence, even if the specifics aren’t there to use in a courtroom. And one suspects that Jack Smith has had time and grand juries, and has been able to develop additional evidence, but just in the court of public opinion, this tells us how poorly set the trump administration was, that this is not the kind of leadership we need in the White House. It’s as informative for the upcoming elections as it is for the forthcoming trials.”
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
