Andrew Weissman quietly has picked this up last night when I posted this….
Here is a bigger focus on this angle….
The Feds have NOT touched the New Jersey part of the case….
Is Smith saving THAT for another Grand Jury IN New Jersey giving the Feds another chance to hit the ex-President away from what may turn out to be a Trump friendly jury poll and trial judge?
Trump’s Bedminster conduct, as described in the indictment, appears to fit the description of two federal offenses designed to keep America’s national-security secrets safe. One makes it a crime to intentionally communicate national-defense information to people not authorized to receive it, and the other makes it a crime to intentionally disclose classified information to the same. These are more serious crimes than willful retention of such documents, which is done to prevent possible leakage. Deliberate dissemination is the leakage itself.
The Justice Manual, the Department of Justice’s guidebook on criminal procedure, as well as guidance from the attorney general’s office, advises prosecutors to give strong consideration to charges of dissemination before making them. According to the manual, once a determination is made that an indictment is warranted, “the prosecutor must select the most appropriate charges,” and “ordinarily, those charges will include the most serious offense that is encompassed by the defendant’s conduct and that is likely to result in a sustainable conviction.” Attorney General Merrick Garland has indicated that the prosecutor can consider a number of factors in deciding whether to bring the most serious charges.
Smith appears to have taken a cautious, narrow approach. Even though the indictment describes alleged dissemination and disclosure of national-security secrets, the indictment did not charge Trump with those offenses.
One possible explanation for his decision: venue. The Constitution requires prosecutors to bring charges in the location—or venue—where the alleged criminal conduct took place. Justice Department prosecutors could not necessarily bring charges against Trump in Miami for alleged criminal conduct that occurred in another state, in this case New Jersey. But the absence of such charges in the indictment raises the intriguing possibility of another indictment to come, in a jurisdiction, no less, with a pool of jurors and judges more favorable to the government’s case against Trump…..
Update on Trump possible NJ Federal files problems….
Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s retention of national security material were examining evidence within weeks of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last year that he might have handled classified documents at his Bedminster club in New Jersey, according to two people close to the matter.
The indications of classified documents at Bedminster so alarmed prosecutors that they focused part of the investigation on whether Trump might have transported the materials or disclosed their contents there in addition to refusing to return them to the government, the people said.
Trump was charged this month with retaining national defense information and obstruction of justice, in an indictment that also notably alleged that Trump discussed a military plan to attack Iran and waved a classified map of Afghanistan in front of a staffer in 2021 at the New Jersey property…
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