The Lawyers Who Defended Trump Raise Alarm About Indictment

• Last week's federal indictment against former President Donald Trump has drawn a different response than the Manhattan indictment from March.
• Bill Barr, Alan Dershowitz, Ty Cobb and Jonathan Turley have all warned that the Justice Department has a "strong" case against Trump over the mishandling of confidential records found at Mar-a-Lago.
• The four men previously had criticized the criminal charges in Manhattan, arguing that there was little to no legal standing for the indictment related to the hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels.

Several legal experts who defended former President Donald Trump against his first indictment in Manhattan don't seem as willing to take his side when it comes to the recent federal indictment from last week.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Trump impeachment attorney Alan Dershowitz, former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb and Fox News legal commentator Jonathan Turley have all raised concerns that the Department of Justice likely has strong evidence against Trump based on the indictment unsealed last week.

On Thursday, Trump was charged with 37 counts in connection to the confidential documents that were found at his Mar-a-Lago home last summer, a year-and-a-half after he left office. The full indictment revealed that the charges included 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and that the presidential records were found across the estate in places like a bathroom, Trump's bedroom and a ballroom.

Experts have indicated that the new indictment is much more damning than the one that was unsealed in late March. Roughly two months earlier, the Manhattan District Attorney's office announced that Trump was being charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to the hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has maintained his innocence in both cases.

Although top legal commentators didn't give the Manhattan indictment much attention, arguing that the charges were weak, their comments about the federal indictment suggest Trump could really be in hot water this time around.

Here's how their comments on the two cases compare:

Former Attorney General Bill Barr

Barr, who headed the Justice Department under the Trump administration, told on Fox News Sunday that while Trump has been "a victim in the past," the idea of presenting him as a victim in the federal probe is "ridiculous."

"He's not a victim here," Barr said. "He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets the country has."

The former attorney general called Friday's 49-page report "very detailed" and "very, very damning" and said that the 31 counts that fell under the Espionage Act were all "solid counts."

"If even half of [the indictment] is true then [Trump's] toast," Barr said.

His comments come in stark contrast to his critical response to the Manhattan indictment, which Barr said was an "abomination" and "the epitome of the abuse of prosecutorial power."

In an interview with Fox, Barr blasted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for "going after the man, not a crime" and declaring it "a lousy case" that was "pathetically weak."

"The case is held together by chicken wire, paper clips, and rubber band," Barr said.

Constitutional Lawyer Alan Dershowitz

Dershowitz, who represented Trump during his first impeachment, has been largely supportive of the former president amid his legal woes despite being a Democrat who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.

When the Manhattan charges were unsealed, Dershowitz called the indictment "laughably flawed" and argued that it was "ridiculous" for Trump to be accused of not accurately recording hush money payments, which are legal, on financial disclosures.

In an op-ed for the Daily Mail, the attorney said whatever the outcome of the prosecution, "Trump should eventually prevail" and that if he was convicted, it would be a "travesty of justice."

However, Dershowitz did not have the same view on the federal indictment, which he said was "much, much stronger" and which he likened to a gun with "Trump's fingerprints on it."

"The New York indictment is a joke. It's not strong. It's weak, it's embarrassing," Dershowitz said on a Monday episode of his podcast. "This one's strong. This one does have allegations that have to be responded to."

Former White House Attorney Ty Cobb

Even before the federal charges against Trump were announced, Cobb, a member of the Trump administration's legal team, said he believed that an indictment in the Justice Department's investigation would lead to jail time for Trump.

That was last month. Weeks later, Cobb told CNN's Erin Burnett that the alleged audio recording of Trump discussing the classified materials he kept after leaving the White House would "further enhance" the federal case. CNN had reported that the DOJ had obtained a copy of the tape.

A week before the federal indictment was announced, Cobb said that if the recording was true, "it eviscerates the two defenses that Trump has put forward."

"The first being that merely by taking documents he declassifies them or that he has the authority, if he is playing with the ducks in the hot tub, to declassify them in his own mind," Cobb said

His comments drew Trump's ire. The former president blasted Cobb as a "disgruntled former Lawyer" over Truth Social, calling Cobb's opinion "angry, nasty, and libelous" and threatening to hold him "legally responsible" for those words.

But Cobb's views on Trump's legal setbacks have not always been against the former president's favor. In April, he compared the Manhattan case to a "water pistol," which he told CNN was "unnecessarily preceding" the federal indictment, which he likened to a "missile-launching F-35 attack."

Legal Commentator Jonathan Turley

On Friday, Turley appeared on Fox News, saying the indictment was "extremely damning" and that it was not one that could be dismissed.

"The Special Counsel knew that there would be a lot of people who were going to allege that the Department of Justice was acting in a biased or politically motivated way. This is clearly an indictment that was drafted to answer those questions," Turley said. "It's overwhelming in detail."

He said the indictment revealed that the DOJ had "a lot" of witnesses who "directly quot[ed] the president in encouraging others not to look for documents or allegedly to conceal them," adding that those testimonies included "highly incriminating things."

Speaking specifically about the photo of the documents found in a ballroom and bathroom at Mar-a-Lago, Turley said, "It's really breathtaking. Obviously, this is mishandling. Putting the classified documents into ballrooms and bathrooms borders on the bizarre."

"It's hard to show a picture of these boxes surrounding a toilet and saying 'we really acted responsibly,'" he continued.

Turley also said the federal indictment is a "whole new ballgame" from the Manhattan one, which he called "a weaponization of the criminal justice system, in my view."

Turley previously called the Manhattan case a "legal slurpee" that was "immediately satisfying for many with virtually no legal substance."

"This is a thrill kill case and Bragg just delivered on his campaign promise to bag Trump on something... anything," he wrote in an April op-ed for the New York Post.