DOJ officials say they can't rely on what Trump's lawyers tell them because he often ignores advice and withholds information, report says

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DOJ officials say they can't rely on what Trump's lawyers tell them because he often ignores advice and withholds information, report says
Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally on August 05, 2022 in Waukesha, Wisconsin.Scott Olson/Getty Images
  • The DOJ reportedly assumes it can't trust what Trump's lawyers say because he often changes his mind.
  • It also assumes it can't rely on his attorneys because he withholds information, the report said.
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Justice Department officials assume they can't rely on what former President Donald Trump's lawyers say given Trump's volatility as a client.

That's according to The New York Times, which reported that department officials had been in communication with Trump's representatives for months while trying to recover hundreds of pages of government records that were improperly moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.

The report cited Justice Department officials as saying they worked under the assumption that Trump's lawyers couldn't "speak with authority" for him because he could change his mind at the drop of a hat and may withhold information from his own attorneys.

The Times' reporting squares with what former prosecutors and lawyers who've worked for Trump told Insider earlier this week.

"As time has gone by, he's gotten farther and farther ahead of his lawyers, to the point where it's hard to tell if they're following his advice or if he's following theirs," Ty Cobb, who was the White House special counsel during the Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, told Insider.

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Another attorney familiar with the Trump team's thought process expressed skepticism that the former president's lawyers were equipped to handle a case like this, adding that Trump's main focus appeared to be on waging a public-relations war against the Justice Department.

"He's a big believer of the public-relations assault, which I've never seen work," the lawyer told Insider. "It says to me that they want to kill the messenger, which speaks to consciousness of guilt instead of dealing with the facts."

Trump's legal team has come under the microscope since the FBI took the extraordinary step of executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month and recovered 26 boxes of documents, some of which were highly classified, that were being stored on the property. The raid came after months of back-and-forth between Trump's lawyers, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Justice Department, during which US officials tried using less intrusive measures to recover the sensitive records.

The Times reported Trump "went through the boxes himself in late 2021" and turned over 15 boxes to the National Archives in January.

The Justice Department later launched an investigation into Trump's handling of national security information and determined he likely had additional documents at Mar-a-Lago that needed to be recovered. They issued a grand-jury subpoena for the records in May, and in June, a top counterintelligence official at the DOJ went to Mar-a-Lago to collect the boxes.

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One of Trump's lawyers, Christina Bobb, then signed a statement saying that to the best of her knowledge, all classified materials had been returned. Two months later, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, it recovered 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top secret.

Trump's team also drew scorn from the legal community when it filed a lawsuit this week asking a judge to block the Justice Department from reviewing records seized in the raid until a special master was appointed to sift out materials that could be privileged.

Some Justice Department veterans said the lawsuit, which echoed Trump's grievances about being politically persecuted and alluded to a 2024 presidential run, read more like a press release. Others added that it reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of how executive privilege works.

On Monday evening, the federal judge the lawsuit was brought to appeared to join other legal experts in their befuddlement.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed to the bench in 2020, asked the former president's lawyers to explain what exactly they were looking for and why they brought the case to her.

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Cannon ordered Trump's lawyers to respond by Friday "further elaborating" on several points, including the "asserted basis for the exercise of this court's jurisdiction," "the framework applicable to the exercise of such jurisdiction," and the precise relief they're seeking.

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