Former President Donald Trump has been charged with obstructing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago documents investigation by allegedly trying to get security footage deleted after authorities requested it.
Yet according to Trump lawyer and spokesperson Alina Habba, there was no obstruction because it’s “common sense” that Trump could’ve easily had the footage deleted if he put his mind to it.
On Fox News Sunday, anchor Shannon Bream asked Habba if, even though investigators ultimately obtained the tapes, there was “an attempt to try to make sure that didn’t happen.”
“Well, let’s be clear,” Habba replied. “If there was an attempt by somebody who lives in a home—take out President Trump—who owns a company. He owns it, he owns the I.T., and he pays for all these employees. If there was an attempt for him to not turn over documents or he wanted something deleted, do you not think that that’s something he couldn’t have gotten done? Let’s just use common sense.”
Bream didn’t seem convinced by that answer.
“That’s the allegation—is that he did try to talk to these employees and that these employees said, ‘we may have to talk to someone else and I don’t know if I can even do that,’” she replied.
“Shannon, I know the facts,” Habba insisted. “When President Trump gets the subpoena, it goes to the organization and the organization turns it over. That is what actually happened.”
According to the superseding indictment, which charges Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira with obstruction in addition to Trump and his aide, Walt Nauta, de Oliveira told an IT employee that “the boss” wanted the server “deleted.” In response, the unnamed employee allegedly said he didn’t know how to do that and that he didn’t have the rights to do it. He then told de Oliveira to ask the security supervisor for Trump’s business about it, the indictment states. Yet de Oliveira kept pressing the issue, telling the employee what “the boss” wanted, and asked, “What are we going to do?”
Despite the allegations in the indictment, which now lists seven obstruction counts, Habba sought to make it seem like Trump never wanted to have the tapes deleted.
“If President Trump didn’t want something turned over, I assure you that is something that could’ve been done,” she said at an earlier point in the interview. “But he never would act like that. He is the most ethical American I know.”
