Trump Lawyer Warned Him Not To Steal Classified Documents

According to new reports, before Donald Trump left the White House, one of his White House lawyers warned him about the legal problems he could face if he stole classified documents. This claim, if proven true, means that one of Trump's only legal defenses is now completely moot, and he won't be able to claim that he didn't know what he was doing was illegal - not that that is much of a defense, anyway. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses these new revelations.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to a damning new report from the New York times, one of Donald Trump's white house lawyers Amer a man by the name of Eric Hershman. Allegedly told the president before he left office, that if you take these classified documents with you, because apparently it was an open secret in the white house that Trump was taking this stuff with him. But Mr. Hershman, according to this report, by the New York times warned the president. If you take these with you, you will be breaking the law. This is illegal and they do not belong to you. There's also, according to the report, Hershman tells him massive national security implications and problems that will arise if you take these documents with you. So do not take the documents with you. Now, we've already gotten information that pat sip, you know, the main white house council had also effectively warn Donald Trump to not take the documents with him.

And now we have a second lawyer that has come forward again, according to the New York times and said, this is what I told Donald Trump. So what does this mean? Well, it means that it's probably gonna be fairly easy, well easier. I guess I should say to prosecute Donald Trump under the espionage act. And here's why in order to prosecute somebody under the espionage act, they have to have taken the documents, the classified documents, nuclear documents, whatever it is, they had to have taken them willfully knowing that they were not allowed to do it. If it was an accident or if Trump legitimately didn't know, he wasn't allowed to have these things, you can't get a prosecution under the espionage act. It would be near impossible to do that. But if we have these two lawyers now on record again, we're actually kind of waiting, I guess, for Hershman to, you know, completely confirm all of this. So I guess, technically right now, this is all alleged Cini however is not. So if we have these two lawyers who are willing to go on the record and willing to testify that, yes, we told Trump, he can't do this. And then he did it anyway, we warned him. It was illegal and he did it anyway. We warned him, it would endanger national security and he did it anyway. Then that's ballgame, right? It's over. You have a very clear cut violation of the espionage act. Assuming these lawyers can prove somehow that they did this.

Now, I don't know about the case with Hershman, but the other attorney, he was actually in communication with the, uh, uh, I can't remember if it was the DOJ or the department of Homeland security, but I do know he was, uh, talking with another government agency where he

Expressed his concerns about Donald Trump taking these documents. So that's documented that's on the record. There's evidence of that. So Hershman's testimony if it were to come to that is kind of just the icing on the cake, right? We've kind of already got what we need for the espionage act conviction. We just need him to bolster that case a little bit more. And I feel that he does that. So Trump cannot claim that he didn't know he wasn't allowed to have these, but there's a catch here. If these lawyers had in fact told Donald Trump, you can't have these sets of documents here. They're classified. That could be the moment that Trump goes. Okay. Uh, you're declassified.