A #SpecialCounsel was appointed months later.

Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who was paid $3 million upfront to join Trump’s team last year, declined to comment.

That quiet entreaty last fall was one of many occasions when lawyers & advisers sought to get #Trump to take a more cooperative stance in a bid to avoid what happened Friday.

#ClassifiedDocuments #Obstruction #Espionage #NationalSecurity #Indictment #DOJ #Legal #Justice #JackSmith

#Trump time & again rejected the advice from #lawyers & advisers who urged him to cooperate & instead took the advice of #TomFitton, the head of the conservative group #JudicialWatch, & a range of others who told him he could legally keep the #ClassifiedDocuments & should fight the #DOJ, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, &Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the docs, even as they disagreed, the advisers said.…

#Obstruction #Espionage #NationalSecurity

#TomFitton, who appeared before the grand jury & was questioned about his role in both the #ClassifiedDocuments case & the investigation into #Jan6…, acknowledged the advice he gave to #Trump. He added that he read the indictment & did not believe it laid out illegal or obstructive conduct. Multiple witnesses said they were asked about Fitton in front of a grand jury & the role he played in Trump’s decisions.

#Obstruction #Espionage #NationalSecurity #Indictment #DOJ #Legal #Justice #JackSmith

Several other #Trump advisers blamed #TomFitton for convincing Trump that he could keep the #ClassifiedDocuments & repeatedly mentioning the “Clinton socks case” — a reference to tapes Bill Clinton stored in his sock drawer of his secret interviews w/historian Taylor Branch that served as the basis of Branch’s 2009 book documenting the Clinton presidency.

#Obstruction #Espionage #NationalSecurity #Indictment #DOJ #Legal #Justice

#JudicialWatch #lost a #lawsuit in 2012 that demanded the audio recordings be designated as #PresidentialRecords & that the #NationalArchives (#NARA) take custody of the recordings. A court opinion issued at the time stated that there was no #legal mechanism for the Archives to force Clinton to turn over the recordings.

#Trump #ClassifiedDocuments #TomFitton #Obstruction #Espionage #NationalSecurity #Indictment #DOJ #Legal #Justice

@Nonilex Indeed they did. Opinion is here:

https://casetext.com/case/judicial-watch-inc-v-natl-archives-records-admin

(And if the judge's name sounds familiar, Judge Jackson has had a few choice things to say about the January 6 insurrectionists that she's had occasion to sentence.) JW wanted NARA to wave its magic wand and turn some tapes that had been made by one of Clinton's biographers into "presidential records" controlled by the Presidential Records Act, which would make them amenable to a FOIA request. Judge Jackson said that NARA can't do that. JW has interpreted that to mean "NARA has no authority to do anything whatsoever," which it most emphatically doesn't. People who are still bloviating about the so-called "socks case" -- one such person in particular -- have missed the point that the Trump documents case has nothing nada nil zilch zero to do with the Presidential Records Act. The fact that Trump was President at one time isn't an element of any of the offenses he's charged with. The JW v. NARA case has nothing to do with anything.