The investigation into former President Donald Trump over alleged mishandling of classified documents has been “irreparably tainted by government misconduct” and therefore could see the case thrown out entirely before trial, a former Trump criminal defense attorney claimed.
Timothy Parlatore, who served as a criminal defense attorney for former President Donald Trump until last month, has said that he believes there are fundamental flaws with the federal case against the current Republican frontrunner — particularly over the grand jury process and breaches of attorney-client privilege — which could result in the entire case being quashed before even heading to trial.
Detailing how he would approach the pretrial strategy in an interview with POLITICO, Parlatore said that Trump’s attorneys should “attack the conduct of the entire investigation and show through death by a thousand cuts why this entire investigation is irreparably tainted by government misconduct,” adding: “The case, therefore, should be dismissed or, at a minimum, the prosecutor should be disqualified.”
The defense lawyer said that one of the most important pretrial battles will concern the admissibility of the communication notes of Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, which were allowed to be used in the case by D.C. federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who allowed prosecutor Jack Smith to pierce attorney-client privilege under the “crime-fraud exception,” which allows the seal of secrecy between a lawyer and client if it is determined that their communications were made with the aim of gaining advice on how to commit a crime.
Parlatore argued that the decision to unseal the notes — which according to the New York Times “gave prosecutors a road map to building their case” — was made prior to the Trump legal team having full access to the evidence put forward against him and therefore the motion will likely have to be re-argued before the court.
The motorcade for former US President Donald Trump arrives to the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. United States Courthouse in Miami, Florida, US, on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Arguing that it was wrong for Trump to be charged with criminal counts for simply asking his attorney questions during a privileged conversation, Parlatore said: “It should have never been a crime-fraud exception, and once it was, it should never have been the evidence for a charge… It’s insane.”
The former Trump defense attorney went on to say that this was followed by a series of wrongdoing by prosecutors during the grand jury process, during which, he claimed, prosecutors frequently asked about privileged attorney-client communications while telling the jury that for Trump’s team to invoke privilege was a sign of guilt. This alone would mean “that the entire grand jury process was flawed,” Parlatore said.
Furthermore, Trump’s legal team will likely attempt to use discovery to obtain information about potential “prosecutorial misconduct” in terms of “the attempted extortion or witness tampering of one of the attorneys,” he said. It has been alleged by Trump’s lawyers that Justice Department counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt had attempted to exert inappropriate pressure on Trump co-defendant Walt Nuata and his attorney Stanley Woodward.
“What communications are there between DOJ and anyone who oversees the judicial process? You would want to try to find any corroboration of that,” he questioned.
Parlatore also said that he would target the legitimacy of the search warrant that led to the radical step of launching a raid on Trump’s estate at Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022, which could come under new scrutiny after the former president’s legal team is provided with the unredacted version of the warrant.