Watergate prosecutor on Trump classified documents investigation: ‘I think he’s toast’

Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said she thinks former President Trump is “toast” after prosecutors secured a tape recording of Trump discussing what seemed to be classified material on a potential military strike in Iran.

“This evidence just adds to the mound of stuff that already exists, and no one piece is the ‘be all and end all,’ but when you put them all together, the case is so strong. You cannot imagine his getting away with this,” Wine-Banks said on MSNBC. 

“I’m wearing a toast pin today because I think he’s toast,” she added, gesturing to a pin on her blouse resembling a piece of toast.

Special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly nearing the end of his investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office and will soon decide whether to bring criminal charges against the former president. The investigation is looking, in large part, at whether Trump obstructed the government’s attempts to secure classified documents that were missing after Trump left the White House. 

Trump was subpoenaed for the sensitive documents, and the FBI subsequently conducted a search at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., where officials discovered about 100 classified documents that had not been handed over. The recent revelation of Trump discussing the sensitive document on tape appears to indicate an awareness that the document was still classified.

Wine-Banks recalled her time as a prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, playing the Nixon tapes for the jury, and said, “There is nothing as compelling as hearing a defendant in a criminal case say words that show his criminality, and these words certainly show that he knew that he hadn’t declassified documents that he still retained.”

“The only trick is: Was he lying? That seems to be the best defense his lawyers have,” she said. “It’s not going to work. It’s not a good defense because, in any event, we know that recovered from Mar-a-Lago were many classified documents and that he knows that he didn’t declassify them because he admits he didn’t declassify. And he couldn’t even if he thought he could in his, ‘wink, wink, I did it.’ He can’t. That’s not how the system works. He has to have done it through a process.”