Trump lawyer: Jan. 6 panel’s criminal referrals ‘worthless’

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CNN —

The Jan. 6 committee of criminal referrals to the Justice Department, urging the prosecution of Donald Trump, is worthless, one of the president’s former lawyers told CNN on Saturday.

The referral itself is relatively trivial, Trump’s attorney Tim Parlatore told CNN Newsroom. The Department of Justice does not have to follow it. There was an existing investigation that we’ve been talking about for quite some time. Really what it does, If anything, is just politicize the process.

Parlatore responded to the unprecedented criminal referrals the bipartisan select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol sent to the Justice Department earlier this week. Committee members said they believe Trump is guilty of at least four federal crimes, including conspiracy and obstructing a joint session of Congress.

The committee on Jan. 6 reached those conclusions after unearthing evidence from witnesses who said Trump was warned that some of his post-election schemes to overturn the results were illegal but he tried them anyway. . This includes Trump’s relentless pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump hopes will interfere with electoral vote counting during the joint session on January 6, 2021.

It’s political noise, but it has no effect, right now, on our defense, said Parlatore, who is representing Trump in the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigations and the potential mishandling of government documents in Mar-a -Lago.

Trump has denied wrongdoing about both matters. The two high-stakes investigations are now being overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor tasked with deciding whether there is enough evidence that Trump broke the law and whether prosecution is appropriate.

The Mar-a-Lago investigation revolves around whether Trump or his aides mishandled classified records and national security documents by transporting them from the White House to his resort and home in Florida.

Federal authorities recovered at least 325 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, according to court filings. Trump voluntarily turned over 184 of these files in January. He returned another 38 under subpoena in June. Justice Department investigators suspected there were more at Mar-a-Lago, so they obtained a search warrant, and found another 103 classified documents during their August search.

Since then, prosecutors have been bargaining with Trump’s lawyers to prove that nothing is left.

Parlatore told CNN on Saturday that he was certain there were no classified records still at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “Everything found has been returned.”

We have a professional search team that has gone through every possible location that could reasonably have the documents, Parlatore said. We passed by some locations that we really thought couldn’t have them. But the DOJ asked us to, so we did it anyway.

He added, Im pretty confident that this is a dead issue at this point.

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