Chris Lieberman, FISM News
Secret Service agents connected to Donald Trump have been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith to testify in the ongoing investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents.
Fox News first reported the subpoenas on Monday, with Bret Baier tweeting that the agents are scheduled to testify before a D.C. grand jury on Friday. The number of agents subpoenaed remains unknown at this time.
FOX News is told multiple U.S. Secret Service agents connected to Former President Donald Trump have been subpoenaed & are expected to testify before the D.C. grand jury likely on Friday. The grand jury appearances are related to the Special Counsel Jack Smith probe into the…
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) April 3, 2023
Attorney General Merrick Garland first appointed Smith in November, following Trump’s announcement that he would seek re-election as president in 2024. Smith was commissioned to lead the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, as well as his role in the January 6 Capitol riots.
The classified documents investigation began following the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last August. During the raid, agents found over 100 documents with classification designations, including 18 marked “Top Secret,” the highest level of classification.
In the months following the raid, the FBI has also found classified documents in the possession of President Joe Biden and former vice president Mike Pence. Garland appointed special counsel Robert Hur to lead the investigation into Biden’s handling of the documents.
Further complicating the case for Trump, a federal judge ruled last month that his attorney, Evan Corcoran, must provide documents and answer questions he had previously refused on the grounds of attorney-client privilege. The judge determined that Smith’s team had presented sufficient preliminary evidence to show that Trump likely committed a crime, triggering the crime-fraud exception. This exception states that attorney-client privilege cannot be invoked if a lawyer and their client are attempting to engage in or cover up a crime.
ALLEGED OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that Smith’s investigation is now focusing on whether Trump obstructed justice by failing to surrender the documents following a May 2022 subpoena, and later misleading his lawyers to provide statements that he knew were false to investigators.
These developments add to Trump’s ongoing legal challenges, with the former president set to be arraigned on Tuesday on charges related to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into 2016 hush-money payments to several women with whom he allegedly had an affair. Trump is the first U.S. president to face criminal charges, either in or out of office.
Trump has maintained his innocence throughout all the investigations, branding them as partisan “witch hunts.” On Tuesday morning, he posted to his Truth Social account, “THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS HAVE CRIMINALIZED THE JUSTICE SYSTEM. THIS IS NOT WHAT AMERICA WAS SUPPOSED TO BE!”
Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told Fox News that the Manhattan case “lacks any legal basis,” but was less optimistic about Trump’s chances in Smith’s investigation. He said, “I think the document case is the most serious case. I don’t think they went after those documents to get Trump. I think they actually wanted the documents back.”
Barr further explained, “And what’s at issue, in that case, is not the taking of the documents. It’s what he did after the government sought them and subpoenaed them, and whether there was any obstruction. And I think that’s the most serious one out there.”