Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax on Wednesday that the federal documents case against former President Donald Trump is going to be more "complicated" to prove in court than what the current media spin is.
"What I know about this case is that it's much more complicated than the indictment would suggest," Whitaker said during "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE" on Wednesday. "The indictment does muddy things up and make it look as if the president has done all sorts of untoward and bad things."
Despite the current way the media is portraying the case and how simple "legal experts" think it is, Whitaker said prosecutors are going to have to prove "each element" of each of the 31 counts against Trump.
"The basic block and tackling in proving these cases are taking the elements of the crime and then proving each element. And they're going to have to for all 31 of these documents. They're going to have to prove some very important things," he said. "First, that it was national defense information covered by the Espionage Act, drafted in 1917."
He said they then must prove the knowledge requirement of the president and his state of mind.
"Each step of the way, they're also going to prove not that he had boxes; they are going to have to prove that certain documents were in certain boxes and that those boxes were moved," he said. "I just think this is going to be a tougher trial than most of the legal experts that I've heard would suggest."
Whitaker said the voters are probably not following Trump's case, or the revelations regarding President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, very closely at this point in the election cycle, but will engage later.
"At the end of the day, you know the electorate and the people that are going to vote are going to engage very late, and the people that swing elections are usually going to decide in the weeks leading up to an election," he said. "The mainstream media is trying to spin this as something major in order to get people's attention, but we're a long way from a trial, a long way from elections."
He said the media is trying to "wag the dog" in the case while refusing to talk about the issues that matter in the upcoming election.
"There's no doubt that the mainstream media continues to try to wag the dog, while important issues that, as we head into 2024, I think a lot of them are left not talked about," he said.
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