By
In a normal political controversy, a politician faces difficult questions and hires attorneys. In a controversy related to Donald Trump, a politician faces difficult questions and hires attorneys, who in turn face legal scrutiny of their own.
Take Christina Bobb, for example. NBC News reported today:
Christina Bobb, the attorney who signed a letter certifying that all sensitive records in former President Donald Trump’s possession had been returned to the government, spoke to federal investigators Friday and named two other Trump attorneys involved with the case, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
For those unfamiliar with Bobb, let’s take a minute to review how we arrived at this point.
As recently as two years ago, Bobb was an on-air figure on a propaganda outlet called One America News Network, where she covered the 2020 election and volunteered for the Trump legal team. The day before the Jan. 6 attack, Bobb was also at a Willard Intercontinental Hotel room with Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman at the Trump campaign’s legal team’s “war room.” (She was also subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee.)
In March 2022, Bobb officially left OAN for Team Trump, and three months later, she attended a meeting that proved to be quite important.
In fact, it was on June 3 when Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national security division of the Justice Department, went to Mar-a-Lago with a few FBI agents in the hopes of retrieving documents the former president improperly took.
As part of that meeting, Bobb — acting in her capacity as Trump’s custodian of record at the time — signed a certification statement, indicating that the former president had fully complied with a grand jury subpoena and no longer had any classified materials at his glorified country club. That statement, of course, wasn’t true: As the FBI discovered during a search two months later, Trump still had plenty of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
For the former president, that has clearly become the basis for a serious legal problem. But the related questions for the lawyer needed answers, too: Did Bobb knowingly sign a document making false assertions to the Justice Department about classified materials?
According to NBC News’ report, the lawyer — who has had to hire her own lawyer — is now trying to steer clear of the mess, telling investigators she did not draft the statement she signed. In fact, Bobb said it was another Trump attorney, Evan Corcoran, who both drafted the statement and told her to sign it.
There was already some evidence of division and disarray within the former president’s defense team. This probably won’t help matters.
But the NBC News report added something else that stood out:
Before Bobb signed the document, she insisted it be rewritten with a disclaimer that said she was certifying Trump had no more records “based upon the information that has been provided to me,” the sources said of what she told investigators. Bobb identified the person who gave her that “information” as Corcoran, the sources said. “She had to insist on that disclaimer twice before she signed it,” said one source who spoke with Bobb about what she told investigators.
But why insist on the disclaimer? Was it because Bobb had reason to be concerned that Trump might very well have had more classified materials, despite the document she was signing? If so, why sign it at all? If not, why make a fuss about having the document rewritten?
I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this one.
Postscript: For more background on the Bobb aspect of the larger controversy, my colleague Lisa Rubin had a great item on this in late August.