Is there any possible defense to what prosecutors regard as a ‘smoking gun with fingerprints’?
By Joe Kovacs
President Donald J. Trump walks from the South Portico entrance of the White House to speak to reporters Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020, before boarding Marine One to begin his trip to Fayetteville, North Carolina. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)
With Donald Trump under fire after CNN played an audio recording of the former president allegedly discussing classified documents and “secret” information, top legal analyst Alan Dershowitz is proffering an intriguing question.
“Does the former president know something that he’s not yet sharing?”
In a column posted Tuesday by the professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, Dershowitz, a Democrat, said CNN’s broadcast of the Trump audio recording raises important questions.
“First, how did CNN acquire the recording, which is part of an ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution?” he wondered. “The only people who should have had access to it were prosecutors, the Trump aides who made the recording, and perhaps the Trump legal defense.
“If prosecutors leaked it, that would almost certainly constitute a crime or at the very least a violation of Justice Department rules. If the Trump defense leaked it without Mr. Trump’s permission, that too would raise serious legal and ethical questions.”