Attorney General Todd Blanche has conceded that it was right to investigate President Donald Trump over the classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, a national security journalist wrote Monday.
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Marcy Wheeler made the argument at emptywheel, pointing to a dispute within the department over where classified evidence can be handled safely.
The prosecutor leading the investigation of Trump’s critics asked for a high-security room, known in government as a SCIF, at his Florida office. Justice Department officials told him to use an FBI facility miles away, CNN reported Monday.
“You’ve just conceded it was wise to investigate Trump!” Wheeler wrote, saying Blanche had effectively acknowledged the records were “far too sensitive to store in a ballroom.”
Trump was charged in 2023 with illegally keeping classified records at his Palm Beach estate, where an image included in the indictment showed boxes stacked on a ballroom stage, the Associated Press reported.
Blanche was defending Trump at the time. In a that August, he and co-counsel asked the judge to let Trump discuss classified evidence in a restored secure room at or near his home rather than travel to government facilities across South Florida.
“Limiting any discussions with counsel to the government-offered SCIFs is an inappropriate, unnecessary, and unworkable restriction,” the filing said.
The same filing said the defense could not review the most sensitive documents at all until its lawyers received full security clearances, and reserved the right to seek more time because of it.
Joe diGenova, the former U.S. attorney brought in to lead the investigation in April, resigned last Thursday, a day after a tense phone call with Blanche over his attempt to block lawyers sent from Washington to help, CNN reported.
Justice officials disputed any suggestion that diGenova had been denied resources, according to the network.
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“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” diGenova said in an interview with the New York Post following his DOJ resignation.
Wheeler noted that Blanche has used a similar request to delay the classified documents investigation into Trump.
“Effectively, then, one-time Defense Attorney and current Attorney General Todd Blanche told Joe DiGenova he should make do, just as prosecutors told Todd Blanche to make do,” she wrote on Monday. “I guess one-time Defense Attorney and current Attorney General Todd Blanche now concedes that the documents his current and former client stole were far too sensitive to store in a ballroom, which really raises the question what the f— are we doing here? You’ve just conceded it was wise to investigate Trump!”
Five months after diGenova took over, no one has been charged and it remains unclear whether anyone will be, the AP reported. Department officials had expected the first charges as soon as this month, according to CNN.
A day after the resignation, prosecutor Kurt Olsen told lawyers for former CIA Director John Brennan that several grand jury investigations remained active, including a “far-reaching” inquiry in Fort Pierce, Florida, covering “issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond” into whether Trump’s civil rights had been violated, according to a filed Monday in Washington.
Olsen said he reported to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and from there to the deputy attorney general and to Blanche, the declaration said.
Brennan was served on the day diGenova quit with a subpoena the departing prosecutor had signed a day earlier, ordering him to appear before a grand jury in Fort Pierce on Oct. 15, the declaration said.
“None of this makes sense from a prosecutorial perspective. But these people are dumb and corrupt and insane, so they don’t care,” Wheeler concluded.
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