During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press, Timothy Parlatore, a former lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump, suggested that Trump might avoid charges in the ongoing investigation into classified documents led by special counsel Jack Smith.
Parlatore drew a parallel to the lack of prosecution in the 2016 Hillary Clinton email case and expressed that he would not be surprised if Trump faced similar circumstances.
“Not at all. I think this is a case where, you know — you have to evaluate every case based on what are the facts and the law and is it something that’s provable, but there’s also the other atmospherics, is this something that from a discretion point of view, is this something where a prosecution makes sense? Is it something where it is a slam dunk case where some of these things could be interpreted a few different ways?” Parlatore said.
“And also when it comes to a specific issue like this, where we are talking about potentially national defense information. Is it the type of thing where they want to declassify these things if they haven’t already been declassified and put them out publicly?” he added.
Parlatore then proceeded to analyze the possibility that prosecutors might refrain from charging Trump, employing a similar line of reasoning as to why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not charged in 2016 for the alleged mishandling of her emails.
“And I know not a lot of people are going to agree with this parallel, but to me, even if he did a lot of the things that they’re saying that he did, prosecuting him, there is the same reasons why you wouldn’t want to prosecute him as to why back in 2016, I was of the opinion that Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be prosecuted, because there are all of these other problems,” Parlatore said.
