'Rife with political risks': Why Garland faces tough calls in considering Trump charges
Legal experts say Merrick Garland may have enough evidence to charge Donald Trump with mishandling national defense information and obstruction of justice. But an indictment isn't guaranteed.
Over the past 16 months, the federal government sent letters and emails, made phone calls, issued a criminal subpoena and finally executed a search warrant to retrieve a bewildering number of sensitive government records from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Listed in two Justice Department court filings filed in as many weeks, the paper trail of records lay out a road map for what could be the first criminal indictment of a former president, according to legal experts and former Justice Department officials who spoke to NBC News and say Attorney General Merrick Garland probably has enough evidence now to charge Trump with mishandling national defense information and obstruction of justice.
But it’s a singularly complicated task, wrought with myriad difficulties — chiefly the explosive political proposition of indicting a former president — that no attorney general has faced before, according to Garland’s predecessors, former prosecutors and seasoned federal defense attorneys.
“The attorney general is not in a monastery, unconnected to the world that surrounds him,” former Attorney General Eric Holder, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said in an interview, discussing the complications of the case. “And yet, your primary responsibility is to enforce the law.”
Judge grants Trump’s request for special master to review Mar-a-Lago documentsSept. 6, 202206:23Garland has repeatedly emphasized that his decisions are driven by the “facts and the law.” And Holder, other former prosecutors and one of his Republican predecessors as attorney general say they trust him. But in weighing whether to charge a political figure, Holder acknowledged that “some part of the calculus is the impact of any prosecution decision” on the country.
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