The Department of Justice's (DOJ) investigation into former President Donald Trump could be bolstered by his inability to produce a classified document pertaining to the United States military allegedly in his possession, legal expert Melissa Murray said on Sunday.
Trump is facing an investigation by the DOJ into whether he mishandled hundreds of classified documents after he left office in January 2021. The FBI seized the documents from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, last August after Trump allegedly ignored a subpoena requiring him to turn them over. The DOJ has appointed special counsel Jack Smith to oversee the case. Trump has maintained his innocence, saying that he was able to circumvent the traditional declassification process because he was president at the time.
However, the former president is facing new scrutiny in the case after CNN reported last week that prosecutors were looking into an audio recording in which he allegedly discussed keeping a classified military document about a potential attack against Iran during a July 2021 meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
Meanwhile, Trump's legal team told the DOJ they were unable to find this document in response to a subpoena for it, meaning its whereabouts remain unknown, The New York Times reported on Friday.
In a statement to Newsweek on Wednesday, a Trump spokesperson said that CNN's report about the recording was based on "leaks from radical partisans" who want "to inflame tensions and continue the media's harassment of President Trump and his supporters."
Trump's team not being able to hand over the document to federal prosecutors may spell troubling news for his defense, Murray said during an appearance on MSNBC.
"I think it is really important here-if you cannot find this document, if it is still missing, you still make the case that something has not been turned over properly. It has gone missing, which actually might strengthen Jack Smith's case about the retention of documents issue," Murray said on Sunday.
Murray warned that in addition to national security concerns raised by the allegedly missing document, the situation could also build mistrust among U.S. allies.
"It makes it much harder for members of the intelligence community to function and to work with foreign intermediaries to keep us safe," she said. "There's a lot here, and all of it goes to those questions around the nature of this act, which is about preventing national security information from being carelessly handled, from compromising the national security more broadly. And that focuses on the idea that those in control of these documents have to control them safely and cannot withhold them willfully or knowingly."
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign and Murray for comment via email.
Trump denied any wrongdoing with regards to the specific document during an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Thursday.
"I don't know anything about it. All I know is this. Everything I did was right," he said.
Other legal analysts have similarly said this document could be troubling for the former president, with former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance saying it could spell "bad news" for him on MSNBC on Saturday.
"Well, it's never a good thing when you lose a classified document, right? So this has got to be bad news for the Trump camp either way," she said. "This case, though...the die was already cast that Donald Trump would be prosecuted in connection with these documents, at least as early as the point where the DOJ was forced to obtain a search warrant to go and reclaim the documents."
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