An attorney for former President Donald J. Trump sent a letter Tuesday requesting a meeting with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to discuss the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s conduct.
The letter did not go into specifics, but claimed that Mr. Trump had been unfairly treated by the Justice Department in an investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith. Mr. Smith is examining Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material discovered at his private Florida club Mar-a-Lago after he became president, and his efforts to retain power after his defeat in the 2020 election.
There are signs that Mr. Smith is approaching the stage of his investigation where he can begin to decide whether to seek to prosecute Mr. Trump and others in the documents case. His other line of inquiry, Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and how those efforts contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters, is less clear.
“Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump has been treated unfairly,” said Mr. Trump’s attorneys, James Trusty and John Rowley. (John Rowley) wrote to Mr. Garland.
“Never in the history of our nation has an American president been investigated in such an outrageous and unfounded manner,” they wrote.
They called for a meeting to discuss “persistent injustice” by Mr Smith’s team.
this letter is previously reported By ABC News.
A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment.
The tone of the letter was markedly different from the approach Trump took shortly after the FBI conducted its investigation. Mar-a-Lago search warrant In August 2022, documents Mr. Trump failed to turn over after receiving a subpoena from the government were restored. At the time, Mr. Trump sent a message through an intermediary to Justice Department officials that the raid had outraged the country and asked how he could help cool it down.
Tuesday’s letter from his lawyer was directly confrontational. That means Mr. Biden’s family has appointed Mr. Garland, himself the focus of the special counsel’s investigation, to receive more favorable treatment at his workplace and at his home.
Hunter Biden is being investigated separately over possible tax charges and the possibility that he lied about his drug use on federal forms he filled out to buy handguns.
Mr Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in an increasingly crowded Republican constituency. But in the letter, Mr. Trump relied on an oft-used playbook in which he suggested that a judge or prosecutor was unfairly treating him by investigating his conduct.
More recently, he tried to imply a conflict with the judge overseeing his indictment in Manhattan state court because a family member works for the Democrats.
Viewed another way, the letter could be an attempt by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to flag Mr. Garland’s involvement in whether Mr. Trump faces charges.
While Mr. Smith will make recommendations on whether to charge Mr. Trump with federal crimes in both cases, the ultimate decision will be made by Mr. Garland. In the documents-related case, prosecutors reviewed evidence related to obstruction of justice and whether he mishandled classified material.
Smith’s team is still hearing witness testimony in both cases, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, despite all indications that the document investigation is nearing completion.
Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers privately predicted that the former president would at least face charges in a case related to the documents, even as they insisted he did nothing wrong. They were also outraged at the number of people being subpoenaed, ranging from low-level workers at Mar-a-Lago to former government officials.
Mr. Trump is indicted in New York over hush money payments to a porn star and faces another probe in Georgia into his efforts to reverse a 2020 poll defeat there.
A former attorney general aide said it was highly unlikely that Mr. Garland would agree to meet with Mr. Trump’s lawyers.
“Merrick Garland will not be meeting with Trusty or any of the other Trump attorneys,” said Anthony Coley, Mr. Garland’s former spokesman. “Jack Smith is chairing this investigation, not Merrick Garland.”
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