Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Wednesday’s Justice Department court filing in the classified documents case against Donald Trump indicates prosecutors have a strong case against the former president.
“It tells me that the special counsel thinks he’s got a very solid case, and he doesn’t need to be cute. He can be what prosecutors call ‘open kimono’ and turn over all the evidence early,” Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
The filing disclosed that special counsel Jack Smith’s team had handed over its first set of discovery materials supporting its case to Trump, who is accused of mishandling classified government documents taken from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The first batch of discovery included evidence obtained via search warrants and subpoenas, surveillance footage and grand jury testimony of witnesses who will testify for the government at trial, according to CNN.
Whitehouse said the sizable handover spelled trouble for Trump and his legal team.
“It tells me that it’s gonna be bad Christmas for the Trump lawyers as they open the different files of evidence and find out how awful the evidence is against their client,” he said.
“And it tells me that they want to get Trump’s attention early,” he added, “by getting his lawyers the evidence that they need to be able to go to their client and say, ‘Hey, you are in real trouble here.’”
Trump was indicted earlier this month on 37 criminal counts, including Espionage Act violations, after prosecutors said he refused to return hundreds of sensitive government documents despite repeated efforts to recover them, including a government subpoena.
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