DELIVERY BY HAND

¶The Honorable Merrick B. Garland Attorney General of the United States Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20530

¶Re: Letter from Counsel to Donald J. Trump of January 6, 2025

¶Dear Mr. Attorney General:

¶As you know, my Office provided counsel to Mr. Trump, Mr. Nauta, and Mr. De Oliveira an opportunity to review a draft of my confidential Report and to provide any response in writing by 2 p.m. on January 6, 2025, so that my Office could consider any issues that counsel identified in the final Report before officially transmitting it to you. Only Mr. Trump's counsel chose to provide a written response, in the form of a letter to you. That response fails to identify any specific factual objections to the draft. Instead, Mr. Trump principally objects to public release of the Report, and in service of that objection makes a variety of false , misleading, or otherwise unfounded claims. While the determination as to whether to publicly release the Report, consistent with applicable legal restrictions, is yours as Attorney General, see 28 C.F.R. § 600.9(c), I felt it necessary to address below certain inaccuracies set forth in Mr. Trump's letter.

¶As an initial matter, the Office extended Mr. Trump a special accommodation by allowing his counsel to review a draft of the Report. Such an accommodation is not required under the law or regulations. Nonetheless, the Office elected to provide Mr. Trump 's counsel access to the draft Report through what it understood to be a process similar to that employed by Special Counsel Robert K. Hur: by allowing counsel to review the draft in person over the course of four days, in the Office's workspace, without contemporaneous access to personal electronics but with the ability to take notes, including the use of government laptops on which to draft a response. Specifically, on December 11, 2024, Mr. Trump's counsel requested an opportunity to review the Report before it was submitted to the Attorney General. On December 15, 2024, the Office informed Mr. Trump's counsel that it would make arrangements for counsel to review the draft Report and provided a range of dates when the review could occur. After Mr. Trump's attorneys complained that the initial review dates that the Office offered conflicted with their vacation schedules, the next day the Office changed the schedule to provide the dates they requested. It was thus surprising and disappointing to see Mr. Trump's grievances about these accommodations in his letter, see Trump Letter at 2-3, especially after Mr. Trump's counsel explicitly stated their "genuine" and "personal appreciation" to the Office for the new dates in a phone call on December 16, 2024.

¶Mr. Trump's other cnt1c1sms of the review process are similarly disingenuous. For instance, he complains that he was prevented from reviewing the underlying documents cited in the draft Report, id. at 1, but over the four days Mr. Trump's attorneys were given to review the Report, they never requested access to a single underlying document, despite the fact that the Office had attorneys on hand specifically assigned to respond to any questions counsel might have. Relatedly, Mr. Trump insinuates that the Office improperly "demanded" that counsel delete discovery productions prior to their review of the draft Report, when in fact that deletion was required by the protective orders that federal judges entered in both of Mr. Trump's criminal cases. See United States v. Trump, No. 23-cr-80101 , ECF No. 27 at 3 (S.D. Fla. June 19, 2023); United States v. Trump , No. 23-cr-257, ECF No. 28 at 2-3 (D.D .C. Aug. 11, 2023). In sum, Mr. Trump's counsel had a full opportunity to review the draft Report, and only came to the Office to review it on the first two of the four days available. Upon completing that review, Mr. Trump has not contested a single factual representation in the Report, instead objecting only to its public release.

¶Other complaints by Mr. Trump are addressed and rebutted by the Report and court decisions. For instance, Mr. Trump recycles his baseless allegation that the Office's work constituted a partisan attack, a claim flatly rejected by the only court to have ruled on it. See United States v. Trump, No. 23-cr-257, ECF No 198 (D.D.C. Aug. 3, 2024) (denying Mr. Trump 's motion to dismiss indictment based on selective and vindictive prosecution, "finding no evidence of discriminatory purpose," "no evidence demonstrating a likelihood of vindictiveness," and "no evidence that would lead the court to infer that [prosecutorial] discretion has been abused") (internal quotation omitted) . The Report explains in detail the Office's steadfast adherence to neutral and evenhanded application of the law and to the Department's Election Year Sensitivities policy. Mr. Trump also persists in his challenge to the Attorney General 's authority to appoint a Special Counsel, which is the subject of a pending appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. See United States v. Nauta et al., No. 24-12311 (11th Cir.). As explained in my Report, the Office is confident that the Department has strong arguments to prevail on that issue.

¶Finally, Mr. Trump 's letter claims that dismissal of his criminal cases signifies Mr. Trump's "complete exoneration." That is false . As the Office explained in its dismissal motions and in the Report, the Department's view that the Constitution prohibits Mr. Trump's indictment and prosecution while he is in office is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government's proof, or the merits of the prosecution-all of which the Office stands fully behind.

¶Sincerely yours,

¶2i!::