Criminal defendants are routinely advised not to comment on pending charges against them. But Donald Trump, the former president and current White House hopeful, is no ordinary defendant.

In his first televised interview since his indictment on federal charges last week, the former president admitted that he had delayed turning over boxes of documents despite being asked to do so, in fact drawing false parallels between his case and classified document searches involving regarding other politicians. and claimed he didn’t really have a Pentagon plan of attack that he bragged to others about, according to the indictment.

Such comments, such as comments made by a defendant about a pending case, can complicate his attorney’s job, potentially excluding defenses they might otherwise have wanted to make, or embedding them in certain arguments to stay consistent with his claims. The interview could provide the Justice Department with compelling and admissible insight into Trump’s state of mind as the case progresses, allowing prosecutors to pre-emptively attack defenses he may want to invoke.

If my client had come on TV and said everything he said, I might have passed out, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a Washington criminal defense attorney.

The interview with Fox News aired just hours after a federal magistrate judge granted a request from the Justice Department for a protective order in the case to prevent disclosure of evidence provided to the Trump team through the discovery process for sharing information, although nothing seemed to be said in the interview to conflict with that directive.

It’s part of Trump’s long-running pattern of openly commenting on legal matters. Sometimes such comments have been to his own detriment, as last month when E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who won a $5 million sexual assault and libel award against Trump, sued for at least $10 million more over comments he made. after the verdict.

In a criminal case, the stakes are even higher.

You usually say to your customers: Don’t make statements. Refer people to me,” said Richard Serafini, a former Justice Department official and attorney in Florida. I have simply politically declined to comment on the case and will let your attorney comment for you.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the Fox interview.

The indictment filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith accuses Trump of illegally holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing government efforts to recover them, including through a asking assistant to move boxes before investigators visit, and by suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents demanded in a grand jury subpoena.

In the Monday night interview, Trump repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

But in doing so, he seemed to undermine possible future arguments from his lawyers that he was not closely involved in the handling of the boxes, or that he had taken prompt action to comply with demands to return the documents.

He falsely claimed he had a right under the Presidential Records Act to take the documents from the White House, and acknowledged that he delayed handing over the boxes because he wanted to first remove personal belongings that investigators said were with the files. mixed. something he suggested he had been too busy to do.

When asked about an allegation in the indictment that he told his lawyer to tell the Justice Department that a filing subpoena was fully complied with, he said: Before I send boxes, I have to get all my stuff out. These boxes were interspersed with everything: golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes. There were many things.

He essentially admits that he knew the documents were there, Jacobovitz said. That is not consistent with saying: it is planted there.

One of Trump’s Republican presidential rivals, former governor of New Jersey. Chris Christie said the excuse for delay served as evidence of obstruction of justice in his view, as Trump allegedly instructed his lawyers to declare to the Justice Department that all classified material had been returned.

It seems to me…

last night

, as a former prosecutor, that he admitted on air last night to obstruction of justice, Christie said. I can tell you this: his lawyers are jumping out the window this morning where they are near.

In addition, Trump denied the Justice Department’s characterization of a core allegation in the indictment that during a July 2021 meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, he showed a Pentagon plan of attack and told others that it was classified information that he could no more declassification because he was no longer president. In the interview, Trump denied holding any specific document.

There was no document. That was a huge amount of newspapers and everything else, about Iran and other things, he told Fox News host Bret Baier. And it may have held up or not, but that was not a document. I had no document per se, there was nothing to disclose. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.

The episode is described in the indictment based on an audio recording obtained by prosecutors, who were able to call people who witnessed the Bedminster encounter to testify about the document that was shared.

But as is always the case with Trump, the court of public opinion also matters. Trump is well-practiced in legal delaying tactics and could hope to drag out proceedings so long that a trial is not finalized until after the November 2024 election.

On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon set a trial date of August 14, though that is likely to change given the complexity of a criminal case involving sensitive classified information.