‘Dangerous Moment’: CNN’s Elie Honig Lays Out the Stakes For Trump and Jack Smith As More Charges Made Public

CNN Legal Analyst Elie Honig called the three additional charges filed against Donald Trump Thursday “an important and dangerous moment” in the classified documents case.

“Wolf, this is a major breakthrough in this case,” Honig said. “And just to refresh our viewers’ memories, there is an incident charged in the initial indictment and charged again in this new indictment, where Donald Trump is showing people with no security clearance after he’s left the White House, people who are writing a book about Mark Meadows.”

“He’s ruffling documents and telling them to look at this, and says, ‘I could have declassified when I was in office but I didn’t,” Honig continued, adding:

There had been some question, as Kaitlan [Collins] just laid out, about whether there was an actual classified document he was showing or whether he was just puffing or exaggerating and, as Kaitlan said, Donald Trump’s representatives said it was the latter. Now we know that’s not true. Now we know the document Donald Trump was showing these people with zero security clearance was an actual highly-classified document that had to do with war plans, and we know DOJ has that document.

They’ve now added a third charge against Donald Trump. And why this is so important is because this is the one incident in the whole indictment where Donald Trump most flagrantly disseminates the information. Where it’s not just sitting in boxes in his bathroom or on the stage at Mar-a-Lago, which is bad, which is potentially criminal, but it’s the one most flagrant incident where he’s taking that information and giving it out to somebody. And that’s why it’s such an important and dangerous moment in this case.

Watch the clip above via CNN.