‘Donald Trump Is the Target of This Investigation’: Former DOJ Prosecutor Reacts to Bombshell WaPo Report
Daniel Goldman, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, claimed that Donald Trump is the “target” of the Department of Justice’s investigation into classified documents recovered from the former president’s Florida estate.
According to the DOJ’s manual, “A ‘target’ is a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.”
On Wednesday, the Washington Post published a damning report indicating that Trump directed employees at his Mar-a-Lago estate to move classified documents after he received a subpoena for them in May from the Department of Justice. Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said “a Trump employee” told federal agents about the boxes being moved. Security camera footage reportedly corroborates at least part of the account.
In June, Trump’s attorneys told the DOJ that to the best of their knowledge, all government material had been returned. Then in August, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, where they retrieved thousands of government documents that Trump was supposed to return upon leaving the White House. Some of the documents are classified.
Appearing on Wednesday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Goldman, who is the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district, offered his view.
“I will tell you, Lawrence, it is no laughing matter here that Donald Trump is the target of this investigation,” he said.
Goldman, who is the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district, also said he’d never received more death threats as a prosecutor than when he served as lead counsel against Trump at his first impeachment trial.
“When I led the impeachment investigation, I received threats because of–from Donald Trump supporters,” Goldman said. “I prosecuted mob offices, violent Russian organized criminals, and the most threats, the most fear I ever had was doing the impeachment investigation. So it is real, these threats.”
He then theorized how this particular part of the investigation has played out.
“What probably happened, in this case, is that that witness was questioned, lied because he was afraid of Donald Trump,” he said. “Then the FBI gets the surveillance tapes and they see this individual moving boxes after the subpoena. They then go back to the guy or woman, and they say, ‘Here’s a video of you moving the boxes when you said you didn’t. So it’s time for you to come clean. That’s often how this sort of thing happens.'”
Watch above via MSNBC.
