President Trump’s former lawyer Tim Parlatore believes the former president’s defense team will claim prosecutorial misconduct in Jack Smith’s ongoing classified document probe. Special Counsel Jack Smith has been investigating Trump after he stored presidential records at Mar-a-Lago and whether he tried to sabotage the investigation. Tim Parlatore told CBS’s Catherine Herridge he was “stunned” by what he saw the prosecutors pulling in the grand jury room. They asked him questions that were covered by lawyer/client privilege.
Parlatore said:
“I witnessed a lot of misconduct.”
“I was really stunned by what I saw in the grand jury room by the conduct of the prosecutors. They made many attempts to try to get privileged communications. They would ask me about conversations with my client. They would make improper references to the jury to try and mislead them about that.”
“At one point it got to the level where they’re asking me this again and then would turn to the grand jury and say, ‘so you would refusing to provide this information!’ No, I’m not refusing to provide it. The ethical rules prohibit me even if the answer to this question is helpful, I’m not allowed to give it and I turned to the jury and said ‘and she knows it She knows that it is an improper question!’”
Trump’s former lawyer explained that the federal prosecutor:
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL“Crossed a major red line” because implying guilt to a jury based on the “invocation of a Constitutional right is the kind of thing that if it happened in a trial court, the judge would have immediately stopped everything, probably declared a mistrial and the attorney who willfully does that type of thing would potentially face discipline.”
Former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore believes that the former president's defense team will claim prosecutorial misconduct in the ongoing documents probe, telling @CBS_Herridge, "I witnessed a lot of misconduct." pic.twitter.com/4RYRJgzXLu
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 8, 2023
“The government moved all the documents to Mar-a-Lago, not Donald Trump. He was still president when he landed at Mar-a-Lago. And then once he becomes a private citizen all of that happened in Florida, nothing happened in D.C”.
When Parlatore left in mid-May, he said a plan was already in place to respond to a potential indictment.
He anticipates Trump’s legal team would file a motion to dismiss the case, based on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. While he said he does not know how the plan may have evolved, “Any attorney in that situation would want to have a good plan in place. And I have every faith in [Trump’s current legal team].”
“You have to wait until you see the actual indictment to know what you’re specifically responding to, but there are a lot of issues related to this case that are very ripe for motions to dismiss, particularly on the obstruction side,” Parlatore said.
Parlatore told Herridge he was “stunned” during his testimony before a grand jury interview when he was asked by prosecutors about issues he said were protected by attorney-client privilege, which he believes was an improper line of questioning that he contends crossed a legal “red line.”
Two people familiar with the probe said that Trump’s legal team is frustrated with how Justice Department officials have handled attorney-client matters in recent months and raised the concerns to Justice Department officials and to Smith himself in a meeting on Monday at the Justice Department.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment on Parlatore’s allegations.
