Donald Trump’s former White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, saw evidence of obstruction of justice in the former president’s alleged orders to one of his long-time aides.

Cobb joined CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday to discuss the new reporting that Trump made to-do lists for his assistant, Molly Michael, on the back of the marked classified White House documents. Burnett was particularly interested in Cobb’s thoughts about how Trump reportedly ordered Michael to tell investigators, “You don’t know anything about the boxes” of classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump faces obstruction of justice charges for his alleged subversion of the government’s efforts to retrieve those documents, so Cobb took the former president’s words as an order for his staff to commit obstruction as well.

“I hear Trump — really, for the first time in terms of the way this evidence has rolled out — speaking in the terms of a mob boss, giving a direct order to somebody that he probably should have no reason to believe would lie for him, but expecting [Michael] to do so,” Cobb said. “There’s a difference between loyalty and breaking the law, and that’s not a line she was going to cross. So it really is Trump directly ordering obstruction, and that will certainly be helpful to enhance the credibility of others who will testify about the obstruction.”

Cobb made his point by bringing up Yuscil Taveras, the former IT director of Mar-a-Lago, who made a deal with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for immunity. The assessment from Cobb also backs up multiple legal commentators who agree that Trump’s reported orders look like witness tampering on top of his mishandling of classified documents.

  • spaceghoti@lemmy.oneOP
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    1 year ago

    Because the alternative is going to jail for the crimes Trump ordered them to commit.