We're going to continue fact-checking
Trump on his legal strategy
with CNN senior legal analyst Elie
Honig and Jason
Baron, former attorney and senior counsel
at the Justice Department
during the George H.W.
Bush and Clinton administrations.
He's also the former director
of litigation
for the National Archives
and Records Administration.
Elie,
another thing we heard the president
say last night,
another claim
is that he could face up to 400 years
in prison.
I guess that's theoretically possible.
But do you think that
that's at all really on the table?
No, not at all, Jake.
Nobody's getting 400 years
in this case
or 40 years
or anything
close to it, the way he gets that number.
If you take
the maximum of allowable sentences
for all 37 charges in this case
and you add them up,
it does come out to 400.
However, nobody's getting the maximum
in a case like this.
You have to look at the federal
sentencing guidelines,
which are influential, their advisory.
The judge has to consider them,
but they're not binding.
And if you run that calculation,
this case comes out pretty high to
about eight to 12 years.
Now, the judge can go above that,
which seems unlikely to me.
Judge can go below that.
But, Jake,
this seems to me to be no matter what,
even if the judge goes below
that eight to 12 year
range, it's
hard for me to see a judge
going down to probation to no sentence.
So this seems to me
if there's a conviction,
like it's
very likely
to be a prison sentence of some sort,
maybe not eight to ten or 12 years.
Definitely not 400 years. Yeah.
At least that's a claim that's grounded
in some sort of foundation
of reality, though.
I mean, that is if you add up all the
all the sentencing Jason, another claim
we heard from Trump last night
is that he is allowed
to take these documents
under the Presidential Records Act.
Take a listen.
Very simply,
the Presidential Records Act,
which is not even mentioned
in this ridiculous 44 page indictment
under the presidential records Act,
which is civil, not criminal.
I had every
right to have these documents.
So, Jason,
you're an expert
on the Presidential Records Act.
You worked at the National Archives.
Is what he's saying true?
And why isn't the Presidential Record
Records Act mentioned in the indictment?
Well, the president is simply wrong.
The records that were taken to Mar a Lago
are the American people's records.
The Presidential Records Act was passed
by Congress
to change prior practice
where presidents
had their records as personal
and they could take them home.
But ever since Ronald Reagan,
presidents have been governed
under the pre
and the presidential records Act
says that when Joe Biden
was inaugurated,
when he swore away for office,
those records were in the legal custody
of the National Archives.
President Trump had no right
to take a single document
to Mar a Lago, whether it's classified
or unclassified.
And he's conflating the indictment
with respect to the espionage act.
He's separately charged under that act
for taking information
related to the national security.
Some portion of the documents
were classified that may be a crime.
The Presidential Records Act was violated
because he took any document
outside the legal custody
of the National Archives,
and he should have returned them
when the NARA staff asked for them.
L.A.
Trump's Bedminster
Club is mentioned several times.
The indictment is a place that Trump
where Trump showed
classified documents to others.
Do you think it's possible
we might see
additional charges
brought by the special counsel
in New Jersey?
Because all the charges
from yesterday's arrest and arraignment
took place
had to do with things
that took place in Florida.
Yeah, Jake, I've seen
this hypothesis out there.
I think it's interesting.
I think it's a smart concern
but I do see a couple possible
difficulties with it.
One, it's
not actually clear
from the indictment
that there were actual
classified documents at Bedminster.
There's two
incidents referred to in the indictment
where Trump sort of alludes to,
refers to or suggests
that he has some classified information.
But let's remember,
the indictment does not actually refer
to any documents recovered.
And our reporting is
that DOJ was not able to recover
any documents that match up.
So we don't know if DOJ has that or not.
But if they don't, we're not going to see
additional charges.
The other thing is
when prosecutors have released
a related set of charges,
you're not supposed to charge them
serious.
You're not supposed to
sort of charge one.
Then wait.
Then maybe hold back the other
for strategic advantage.
So I think if they had New Jersey charges
based on those Bedminster incident,
they would have charged them altogether.
Jason, Trump's
lawyers have been making the argument
that Trump, in their view,
has the absolute right
to designate his records as personal.
Is there any legal
support for that claim?
No, that's that's just
not the law of the D.C.
Circuit.
In fact,
they keep citing a case that involved
President Clinton's
interview with a historian
and deciding
that those interviews were personal
and he took them as his personal records.
That's completely different
than taking classified records
out of the White House or any records
that are in the official business
of the White House.
And so personal records
are like diaries and journals
and other records
that are not circulated,
not used for government business.
Everything that we know of
that are that he took
with him
seem to be official records
and classified records.
And so that's just not what he should do.
The case law actually says the opposite.
The cases that are cited here,
there is a D.C.
Circuit precedent
that says we did not hold
that the president
could designate any material
he wishes as presidential records
and thereby exercise virtually complete
control over it. So
these
claims are just
absolutely not what the law is.
Jason Barron,
you sound a little frustrated
and I have to say, welcome to my world.
Appreciate it.
To you and to Ellie Hoenig.
Thanks so much.