Baltimore legal expert weighs in on the historic charges filed against Donald Trump
BALTIMORE -- There are a lot of questions in the wake of a multi-count federal indictment against former President Donald Trump.
WJZ sat down with Adam Ruther, a partner at Rosenberg Martin Greenberg, to learn more about Trump's legal woes.
"This indictment covers two categories of wrongdoings that are alleged," Ruther said. "The first one is holding on to records that the president should not have held on to and keeping them in such a way that he should not have kept them. But potentially the more troubling aspect of the indictment is actually as we say: it's not the crime; it's the cover-up."
Federal indictments are often referred to as "speaking indictments" because they don't just say, "Here are the things you're charged with." They actually tell a story, Ruther said.
In the indictment, there are allegations that Trump moved things around and played a shell game with the documents. He had his lawyers certify to the FBI that they had fully responded and had turned over all the records when, according to the indictment, some of them had been moved elsewhere, Ruther said.
"The problem is that every time you lie to an FBI agent, or you cause something untrue to be said to an FBI agent, that's another potential criminal count, and that's how you end up with 37 charges," he said.
