‘Really?!’ Poppy Harlow Shocked When CNN Analyst Says Biden News Makes It ‘Almost Impossible’ To Charge Trump Over Mar-a-Lago Raid
CNN’s Poppy Harlow let out a stunned “Really?!” when analyst John Miller said President Joe Biden’s self-reported and immediately-returned classified documents make it “almost impossible” to charge President Donald Trump over his handling of classified docs.
News broke Monday that President Biden’s lawyers discovered a small number of documents — from his time as VP — bearing classified marking while clearing out a private office last fall and immediately reported and returned the documents to the federal government.
The Biden matter has drawn direct comparisons — particularly among conservatives — with the investigation that exploded onto the national radar with the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home.
On Tuesday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Miller joined Harlow and co-anchors Don Lemon and Kaitlan Collins to discuss the news, and caught Harlow off guard by claiming the Biden matter would effectively shield Trump from prosecution over the Mar-a-Lago probe, despite the differences:
JOHN MILLER: We’re talking about political street fighting here that is going to go on, with control of the House now, at a fairly high pitch. And, you know, if you take the purely legalistic side of it and you get into the optics and the politics, what happened here is going to make it almost impossible to charge Donald Trump with any violation of classified documents.
HARLOW: Really?
DON LEMON: I said that last nightm, it puts Merrick Garland in a very odd position. Did they know this was coming? This was November? I said, well, you know, look, I’m just asking here. Maybe Merrick Garland didn’t. Everyone’s wondering why he didn’t act, did he know this was coming?
JOHN MILLER: The White House knows how to get news out fast and they know how to get news out slow. The idea that we went through the contretemps of last week and once that was all clear, you know, they announced this probably, you know, speaks for itself in terms of analysis.
KAITLAN COLLINS: I’m so interested that you said it helps Trump because I was talking to people close to his legal team yesterday and they were saying this is a huge gift to them because they believe, you know, politically speaking, of course, the obstruction is obviously the big part of the Trump story. He resisted for so long, turning them over. But they believe it helps make their argument that it’s pretty easy actually, to innocently and mistakenly perhaps take classified documents. Does that actually hold up in court?
JOHN MILLER: So it doesn’t hold up in logic.
KAITLAN COLLINS: But does it hold up in court?
JOHN MILLER: Let alone court. Sure, it holds up in court as an argument. But, you know, the law is clear on on both. It’s just, you know, the balancing act of you’ve got a special prosecutor, you know, Jack Smith, who’s going to is going to make a recommendation, and then the attorney general is going to have to make a decision. And these developments have put him in a very awkward place in terms of the decision-making.
Watch above via CNN This Morning.
