Trump ignored his lawyers and listened to this guy
Several of Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to get him to avoid prosecution by returning classified documents to the government, The Washington Post reports. It probably would have worked—but Trump was defiant, insisting he could keep the documents and hiding them from his own lawyers, who he was paying to give him legal advice. (While Trump is known for refusing to pay legal bills, at least one of his lawyers, Christopher Kise, got $3 million up front to represent him.) Instead, Trump did what he always does: He listened to the people telling him what he wanted to hear. One of those people was Tom Fitton, the head of the far-right group Judicial Watch and a figure who deserves a little more notoriety.
Fitton was insistent to Trump and to his lawyers that Trump had the right to keep the documents. This was terrible advice, but Trump liked it. Here’s the thing: Fitton, whose legal advice Trump is taking over that of his lawyers, is not a lawyer. He is, in the words of Liz Dye at Above the Law, a “weirdo pitchman in a muscle T-shirt who runs a shop dedicated to filing stunt lawsuits against Democratic politicians.”