As twice-indicted former president Trump awaited his third indictment on Thursday night, what he actually received was three new charges in his second indictment. And those three new charges wowed MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” crew, who argued on Friday morning that they made the case even stronger than it originally was.
The charges in question came in the case of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, which he was originally indicted for in June. Now, instead of 31 charges in that case — all of which he pleaded not guilty to — there are 34 charges. For Andrew Weissmann, former general counsel for the FBI, it’s been an “incredible” twist.
“Well I thought the case was very strong before this, but it is incredible that it has now gotten much stronger,” he said. “With respect to the obstruction charges, the government’s now going to be able to say, ‘See this really damning surveillance evidence? This is the evidence the defendants did not want you to see. There was a plan to get rid of it, and you know why.’”
Indeed, the superseding indictment filed on Thursday indicated that Trump had instructed two employees to destroy security camera footage from his Mar-a-Lago resort destroyed.
“It is really good evidence, and it helps bolster the underlying part of the case, and of course, it’s an additional set of crimes,” Weissmann said.
The instructions to destroy the footage, Weissmann argued, seem to indicate pretty clearly that Trump was indeed flaunting classified documents to journalists, as suggested on leaked audio last month, though he claimed the paper heard rustling in the tape was definitely not classified documents.
“It’s hard to see something stronger than that,” Weissmann said. “Every prosecutor wants to have their defendant on tape confessing to a crime, and that’s exactly what the government has now in its hands.”
You can watch the full discussion from “Morning Joe” in the video above.
