It has been reported that former president Donald Trump attempted to erase surveillance video when authorities sought it as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s inquiry into classified documents stored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump’s lawyer and spokeswoman, Alina Habba, said there was no obstruction since Trump could have erased the video if he wanted to, but he didn’t.
Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream questioned Habba if there was an attempt to block investigators from obtaining the recordings.
Habba said, taking Trump out of the equation, if someone who owns a home and pays for the employees and the I.T. people and wanted the tapes deleted, they could easily do that. So there was no obstruction.
Bream did not seem to buy that explanation.
The claim is that he made an effort to speak with the workers, but they refused to meet with him, saying instead to get someone else, and they don’t know if they can even do that.
Habba explained that the organization gets a subpoena and gives it to the president.
Trump, his adviser Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira are all accused of obstruction in the new indictment. De Oliveira told an IT worker that the server had to be removed because of orders from above. The nameless worker allegedly said they had neither the knowledge nor access to do the work. According to the accusation, he then told de Oliveira to contact Trump’s business’s security supervisor. Nonetheless, de Oliveira persisted, explaining the boss’s wishes and asking the worker what they planned to do.
Despite the seven obstruction charges added to the indictment, Habba tried to make it seem like Trump didn’t want to get rid of the recordings.
Earlier in the interview, she said that it might have been possible to avoid turning over the documents if President Trump hadn’t wanted them to be. But he would never behave in such a way. He is the most ethical person she knows.
