Donald Trump could take some advice from the trout my lawyer friend caught | Opinion

Washington, D.C. lawyer Bob Bennett is one of best criminal defense attorneys in the nation. He represented President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Over the years he has also defended and represented presidential cabinet secretaries, senators, and nationally prominent journalists.

He also loves to fish. He shares his law office with a speckled brown trout he caught in the Missouri River decades ago. The trout is mounted on the wall behind Bennett’s desk and dispenses what Bennett regards as the most important advice he gives his clients.

Whenever a new or prospective client meets Bennett for the first time, Bennett proudly shows them the fish and asks them to read what the fish advices them on a small brass plaque just below the fish’s mouth:

“I wouldn’t be here if I had just kept my big mouth shut.”

It is advice that criminal defense lawyers regularly give their clients. Nobody talks, everybody walks!

Another view: How Donald Trump fell into the special prosecutor Jack Smith's trap

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Statements come close to confessions

I do not know who is currently representing former President Donald Trump in the case against him for allegedly retaining classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, storing them in offices, a ballroom, a bathroom and even a shower. The ex-president goes through lawyers, scattering them like, um well, documents.

But I think it might be a good idea for the former president to hire Bob Bennett’s fish, or at least follow his advice, if it is not too late.

Since being indicted in the classified documents case, the ex-president has been talking about the case non-stop, not with his lawyers, but with reporters on Fox News, before crowds at campaign appearances, and in posts on something called Truth Social.

His statements have come perilously close to confessions, although when he will quickly retract his confessions in a interview or post on the following day.

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The bravado is akin to 'locker room talk'

His accounts about the case are not just varied. They are often contradictory. At first, he said he had no classified documents at his Florida home as any documents he had there had been declassified simply by him declaring them declassified or simply thinking of them as declassified. He then said he had no such documents either classified or declassified. He just had newspaper clippings.

He then said that there could be classified or declassified documents in boxes mixed in with golf clothes and shoes, but he just hadn’t had time over the past two and half years since leaving the White House to go through those boxes in the Mar-a-Lago showers.

He was also caught on tape bragging to visitors at Mar-a-Lago about classified documents he showed them, telling them they involved national security issues. But he later said that despite what he could be heard saying on tape, they weren’t classified security documents, but, um well , maybe plans for development of a golf course. He said his comments about them as being classified were just “bravado”, like his “locker room talk” about his treatment of women on the infamous Access Hollywood tapes in 2016.

It is probably too late for the former president to follow the advice of Bob Bennett’s speckled trout. And frankly it is doubtful he could ever follow any such advice. Unlike the late great Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker, Donald Trump cannot give himself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.

According to political polls, his non-stop and contradictory statements about the documents has apparently not hurt his standing among voters in upcoming Republican presidential primary elections.

But when a jury in his upcoming trial hears all his statements, they might not be so sympathetic.

Bill Haltom is an author who resides in Memphis and Monteagle.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Donald Trump could take advice from the trout my lawyer friend caught