A significant amount of the indictment against former President Donald Trump is based on attorney-client communications which are protected under U.S. law and will likely lead to a long and drawn-out legal battle in the months ahead, according to legal experts.
Trump has been charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information; one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, one count of withholding a document or record, one count of scheme to conceal, one count of corruptly concealing a document or record, one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, and one count of false statements and representations.
The indictment marks the first time in history that the Department of Justice has charged a former president with a crime and will likely have serious implications for the 2024 presidential race, in which Trump is a leading candidate.
Speaking with EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program on June 13, former federal prosecutor Will Scharf told host Joshua Philipp that it appears as though the DOJ has essentially “gotten into the middle” of the attorney-client privilege between Trump and his lawyer, Evan Corcoran, which Scharf described as “one of the core privileges guaranteed in our legal system.”
The attorney-client privilege protects the confidentiality of communications between individuals and their lawyers, meaning the latter may not disclose either oral or written communications with their clients to anyone unless granted permission by the client to do so.
However, Corcoran was forced to testify in the case against Trump and hand over records, including private correspondence, earlier this year after DOJ-appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith was able to obtain a “crime-fraud exception,” effectively piercing the attorney-client privilege.
‘Key Legal Battle’ Lies Ahead
“It’s not unique, but it certainly is another strange feature of the case that we’re seeing brought in court today,” Scharf said. “If you read the face of the indictment, a lot of the evidence that the special counsel appears to be relying on particularly to prove President Trump’s state of mind, his knowledge, his understanding of what was going on, is attorney-client communications between President Trump and a former lawyer of his.”“Attorney-client communications, attorney-client work product, are very strongly protected in really all common law legal systems, but especially here in America. And the fact that those communications form such a large part of the case against the president is something that’s going to be litigated, and I think, be a key legal battle in the months ahead,” said Scharf, who is running in the 2024 GOP primary for Missouri attorney general.
“I would say that he’s being treated worse than many people who have a much weaker legal case than he does,” Scharf said of Trump.
Scharf said he believes Trump’s legal team will soon move to dismiss all or part of the indictment against the former president and will likely be successful in doing so, meaning he could be found not guilty on a number of counts.
After that, it’s up to the government to prove to a jury of 12 men and women “beyond a reasonable doubt” that their theory of the case against Trump is correct, which Scharf said is a “very high quantum of proof” and a “difficult task” to achieve.
“It’s certainly a long road ahead of us. But if I have to put money on anybody, it would be on President Trump at this point, based on everything that I’ve seen,” Scharf said.
Elsewhere on the “Crossroads” program Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said the indictment against Trump was “political persecution” and akin to what you might see in dictatorships like China or Russia.
‘Weaponized Department of Justice’
Ogles also noted that President Joe Biden has been the subject of an alleged bribery scandal for which there has never been an investigation or subsequent trial.Ogles’s articles of impeachment allege that Biden has “weaponized” his presidency and vice presidency to “shield the business and influence peddling schemes of his family from congressional oversight and public accountability.”
Ogles said he believes that the indictment of Trump is akin to election interference, noting that there are a number of pressing issues that need to be addressed in order to protect American and national security such as the ongoing border and fentanyl crises, but that the focus is instead on Trump.
“We have a border that’s porous and wide open, 250,000 to 300,000 people coming here illegally every single month, you have kids overdosing on fentanyl. Why? Because of this administration. And meanwhile, they’re worried about Donald Trump. This is ridiculous,” the Tennessee lawmaker said.
Ultimately though, Ogles believes the former president will go on to win the 2024 race because “America is waking up to the fact that this administration has weaponized the government against them.”
Patrick Basham, a former adjunct scholar and senior fellow of the Cato Institute and the founding director of the Democracy Institute, shares a similar view, noting that Trump is still doing well in multiple polls.
Biden Administration Made ‘Consequential Miscalculation’
A June 13 USA Today/Suffolk University 2024 poll shows that Trump has 48 percent support in GOP primaries and caucuses with a 25 percentage point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. No other candidate has 5 percent.“This is showing that this is helping Trump not hurting him, and therefore by default, hurting his opponents, principally Ron DeSantis at least on the Republican side,” Basham said. “It shows that this is a monumental, consequential miscalculation on the part of the Biden administration, given the whole point of this is to either weaken Trump as a candidate in 2024 or potentially eliminate him.”
Basham noted that prior to Trump’s indictment, polls were showing him with a “mid to high 20 points lead over DeSantis” but that the former president is now holding up to a 30 percent lead over his rivals, which Basham believes in part is down to voters feeling “sympathetic” toward Trump who is “clearly being politically prosecuted.”
“It’s so helping Trump that I start to wonder, is it possible that Donald Trump is the secret campaign manager of the Biden campaign? Because who would do this thinking it was going to help Biden and hurt Trump, but they’ve done it. And so far they’ve made a big mistake,” Basham said.
Throughout the case against Trump, the former president has maintained that he had the authority to possess classified documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1987.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters in Bedminster, New Jersey, after pleading not guilty on Monday, Trump called the indictment “the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country” and “a very sad thing to watch.”
“This day will go down in infamy, and Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but, perhaps even more importantly, the president who, together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits, and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy,” the former president added.
