NEW YORK— Former President Donald Trump faced one legal setback after another this week as a judge ruled he must sit for a deposition in New York to answer questions about his business practices, his accounting firm declared his financial statements unreliable, another judge rejected his efforts to dismiss conspiracy lawsuits and the National Archives confirmed that he took classified information to Florida as he left White House.
Whatever happens, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a Washington lawyer who has been following the investigations, “I think the weeks will get worse for him.”
Here’s a look at the flurry of developments:
In a Friday letter, the National Archives and Records Administration confirmed that classified information was found in 15 boxes of White House records that Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago and turned over last month.
While federal law bars the removal of classified documents to unauthorized locations, sitting presidents have broad authority over classification. The Justice Department and FBI have not indicated they will pursue a case.
But David Laufman, the former head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section who oversaw the investigation into Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state, tweeted, “It’s hard to imagine that @DOJNatSec is not conducting a criminal investigation into Trump’s stash of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.”
“Even if DOJ ultimately forgoes criminal charges, an investigation is clearly warranted,” he said.
While the Presidential Records Act that oversees the preservation of a president’s documents is widely seen to have little enforcement mechanism, David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, said: “Taking classified documents is an entirely different ball of wax. And as we’ve seen in the past, those are what result in actual charges being filed.”
No matter the legal risk, the revelation also exposes Trump to charges of hypocrisy given his relentless attacks on Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential campaign.
In a statement Friday night, Trump said, “The National Archives did not ‘find’ anything, they were given, upon request, Presidential Records in an ordinary and routine process.”
