Trump officials accused of 'trying their best' to botch a slam dunk prosecution

The evidence against would-be presidential assassin Cole Tomas Allen is overwhelming, but former prosecutor Elie Honig says that doesn’t stop President Donald Trump’s hapless appointees from blowing it.

Witnesses saw Allen running with a shotgun and a handgun toward the ballroom where Trump was about to address the White House Correspondents’ Association. His mad dash was captured on surveillance video, and he confessed in writing in an email to friends and family.

“It’s a case prosecutors cannot conceivably botch — but Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro are trying their best to screw it up,” said Honig. “The problem is both Blanche and Pirro have stubbornly refused to recuse themselves from the case, notwithstanding their status as witnesses and intended victims. In the process, they have given Allen a sliver of a chance.”

It does not help that U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden, a 2017 Trump appointee, enabled their self-sabotage by suggesting Blanche and Pirro might not be witnesses because Allen never made it into the ballroom and they didn’t see anything at a hearing this week. But Pirro personally involved herself in the issue when she told Fox News on May 2 that: “I was in the line of fire here. I could have been killed.” And the accused assassin was explicit about his intentions in his pre-attack email prioritizing “administration … from highest-ranking to lowest.”

“It is a bedrock principle that any time a prosecutor is a potential witness or victim in a given case, they must recuse themselves to avoid a conflict of interest or the appearance of such,” said Honig, who served as director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice. “A federal statute requires the AG to ensure the recusal of any prosecutor who has a “personal [or] political conflict of interest, or the appearance thereof.”

The DOJ’s own regulations mandate recusal where the prosecutor could be seen as “less than fully impartial” or “create[s] an appearance of a conflict of interest likely to affect the public perception of the integrity of the investigation or prosecution,” said Honig, adding that if Blanche and Pirro continue to refuse to recuse, they’ll endanger the entire prosecution.

A failure to recuse will certainly give Allen a legitimate argument on appeal that his prosecution was tainted by conflicts of interest. And federal appeals courts have thrown out plenty of convictions based on the improper failure of prosecutors to recuse themselves.

But Blanche and Pirro love the limelight, said Honig: “Collectively, they have held multiple press conferences about the case, posted about it aggressively on social media, and done interviews on CNN, Fox News, and NBC.”

And both are hoping Trump will nominate them to permanent DOJ leadership positions

“Let’s be real about what’s happening here. Blanche and Pirro are both experienced prosecutors who understand that they should recuse. But then they would forgo the opportunity to grandstand about the case, and they’d risk p—— off the person who will decide whether to nominate them for big, important jobs,” said Honig. “Apparently, they would rather play the politics of personal glory, even if they risk blowing a case against a dangerous assassin who tried to kill the president whose favor they so deeply crave.

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