In a column for MSNBC, the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation suggested that is inevitable that obstruction indictments will be handed down over the top secret documents that were hidden away at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, and that the only question left is who will be headed to court and how many there will be.
According to Frank Figliuzzi, the Department of Justice's case against the former president has grown stronger by the day with no end in sight, and attempts by Trump and his lawyers to dismiss the relentless investigation are misfiring, meaning the DOJ has him dead to rights.
"We could be inching close to someone, maybe Trump himself, being charged with obstruction of justice," the ex-FBI official wrote. "A successful obstruction prosecution would require two things. First, proof that the accused knowingly concealed or destroyed records and, second, proof they did so to impede the work of an official agency. DOJ's response filing provides us some insights into why the department thinks such thing has already happened."
Based upon government filings, Figliuzzi wrote that "the DOJ's assertions seem to make a case for both the 'knowing concealment' and the 'intent to impede' requirements for obstruction," and added that Trump ally Kash Patel could be in trouble, with the former FBI official suggesting, "It's Patel who has claimed he can personally attest to Trump's 'standing order' defense. Time will tell who's telling the truth, but if the FBI were to develop evidence that Patel and Trump conspired to concoct a phony standing order defense, then they could be charged."
"Trump has publicly repeated Patel's assertion that he, Trump, declassified everything. Again, this could merely be free speech, or a deliberate attempt to convince others to go along with a ruse," he wrote. "But if Trump were to repeat a false story to investigators, then they could charge him with obstruction and more. Trump is no innocent bystander here. He can't say that he had no idea all these documents were in his house."
He then claimed the piling up of evidence and the quickness with which the DOJ has responded to every Trump lawyer's assertion should be causing panic in Trump's world.
"Increasingly, it looks like Trump and others knew what he had, knew where it was, and knew not all of it had been returned," he explained before concluding, "The questions they should now be asking themselves include, 'How much more does DOJ know, and how many of us are going to be charged?'"
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