Tim Parlatore, a former attorney of former President Donald Trump who worked on Trump’s documents case, said that the former president created a “problem” for himself with the remarks that he made during his interview this week with Fox News.
Parlatore told Abby Phillips on “CNN Tonight” that Trump’s remarks about the federal indictment that he faces can be used against him in a court of law.
During the interview, Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Trump why he did not return the material when he had the chance to, which would have prevented charges.
“Because I had boxes,” Trump said. “I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA. I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”
Phillips asked Parlatore if what Trump said during the interview was him “admitting, basically, obstruction.”
“It’s difficult to know,” Parlatore replied. “This is one of the reasons why we always advise our clients, ‘Don’t talk about the case. You have the right to remain silent. Use it. Let your attorneys talk about it.'”
Parlatore acknowledged that Trump could have possibly not fully understood the question or could have mixed up the timeline in his headline.
“But here’s the problem: Putting that statement out there – with that question – yes, the prosecutors can absolutely use that,” he said. “And even if he meant that he was talking about the NARA request as opposed to the subpoena request, that’s gonna be very difficult at trial.”
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“How are you gonna overcome that?” he asked. “Are you gonna cross-examine Bret Baier on, you know, ‘What do you think he meant?’ Or are you going to put Donald Trump on the stand and say, ‘Would you like to clarify it?’ It’s a difficult situation.”
Phillips asked Parlatore about Trump’s assertion that the FBI might have been planting evidence on him and whether he had “seen any evidence” that would support Trump’s claims.
“I haven’t seen any evidence of that,” he said. “You know, I’ve obviously gone through all the boxes that were sent back to NARA way back in the beginning, the first 15 boxes. And so I saw how the classified documents or the, you know, the marked documents were mixed in on those.”
“We never got to see what the boxes look like that were taken during the raid,” he said. “We never got to, you know, get an inventory of that to be able to kind of compare and contrast that. So whether they did or they didn’t, I’m not going to opine because I didn’t see anything either way.”
WATCH:
Ex-Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore on Trump's comments in Fox News interview on the documents case: "It's going to be very difficult at trial. How are you going to overcome that?" pic.twitter.com/eB1bJuuh3P
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 21, 2023