Judge Grants Trump’s Special Master Motion

[Binger]

This Noriega incident points to an obvious flaw in the taint team procedure: the government’s fox is left in charge of the appellants’ henhouse,
and may err by neglect or malice, as well as by honest differences of opinion.”).

There are some gems in the order. Absolute gems.

[Binger]

Trump Order Issued
Highlighted, as customary. I would have been much more aggressive, both as counsel, and as a court, to highlight the abuses present and past, the unilateral right to declare what is a personal record rather than Presidential, the fact of declassification, and the like. If I were Judge, I would have returned all property, and found the warrant a callous disregard of Constitutional rights. But Trump's lawyers are mostly ex-government wimps, so no surprise they did none of the above, and thus gave the court less to operate on. The court still stopped the case and appointed the special master. Most notably, the court detailed much of the documents seized were not classified, but often privileged or personal, including tax records, accounting records, medical records, confirming my hypothesis on the Sunday show -- their secondary objective (other than getting back Deep State docs that made the Deep State look bad) was to try to get Kompromat on Trump; hence the scale of the seizures, the spying/searching of the personal materials of Melania and Barron, etc.

The narrative continues to slide and morph. The DOJ and FBI and Garland and the "Executive Branch" referenced in the documents were all hoping this would peak at about 64 days from now. I do not think they can hold the line.

If you are interested in the highlighted sections reference in the intro, please let me know.

[Vēritās]

Never expected anything less from a Trump appointee. But this doesn't really affect the DOJ's investigation except to perhaps delay it a bit. Trump's claims of privilege are just beyond idiotic.

[Binger]

Never expected anything less from a Trump appointee. But this doesn't really affect the DOJ's investigation except to perhaps delay it a bit. Trump's claims of privilege are just beyond idiotic.

Uh. Have you read the order? Delay it a bit? There is a big issue with the investigation.

[Res Ipsa]

And, to Gadianton's point, that is unlikely to happen before the election. It is mindboggling that the DOJ did not ask for the special master, except that, well, they had a different agenda.

Bing Bong’s Law in full effect!

RI,

What’s your take with regard to “reputational harm”? Why would that even factor in since the former President, or his proxies, stole classified information? I doubt most judges care about a thief’s reputation?

eta:

As a function of Plaintiff’s former position as President of the United States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own. A future indictment, based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude

- Doc

Doc, that’s the the part of the analysis that I think is problematic. As I understand it, the potential of reputations harm from potentially being charged is inherent in every criminal case. As the President hasn’t been convicted, she shouldn’t assume that he’s guilty. But it’s hard for me to see how the potential for reputation damage in this case differs from the potential in every criminal case.

When I get a chance, I’ll have to read the cases she cites.

[Binger]

Trump Order Issued
Highlighted, as customary. I would have been much more aggressive, both as counsel, and as a court, to highlight the abuses present and past, the unilateral right to declare what is a personal record rather than Presidential, the fact of declassification, and the like. If I were Judge, I would have returned all property, and found the warrant a callous disregard of Constitutional rights. But Trump's lawyers are mostly ex-government wimps, so no surprise they did none of the above, and thus gave the court less to operate on. The court still stopped the case and appointed the special master. Most notably, the court detailed much of the documents seized were not classified, but often privileged or personal, including tax records, accounting records, medical records, confirming my hypothesis on the Sunday show -- their secondary objective (other than getting back Deep State docs that made the Deep State look bad) was to try to get Kompromat on Trump; hence the scale of the seizures, the spying/searching of the personal materials of Melania and Barron, etc.

The narrative continues to slide and morph. The DOJ and FBI and Garland and the "Executive Branch" referenced in the documents were all hoping this would peak at about 64 days from now. I do not think they can hold the line.

If you are interested in the highlighted sections reference in the intro, please let me know.

[Binger]

Trump Order Issued
Highlighted, as customary. I would have been much more aggressive, both as counsel, and as a court, to highlight the abuses present and past, the unilateral right to declare what is a personal record rather than Presidential, the fact of declassification, and the like. If I were Judge, I would have returned all property, and found the warrant a callous disregard of Constitutional rights. But Trump's lawyers are mostly ex-government wimps, so no surprise they did none of the above, and thus gave the court less to operate on. The court still stopped the case and appointed the special master. Most notably, the court detailed much of the documents seized were not classified, but often privileged or personal, including tax records, accounting records, medical records, confirming my hypothesis on the Sunday show -- their secondary objective (other than getting back Deep State docs that made the Deep State look bad) was to try to get Kompromat on Trump; hence the scale of the seizures, the spying/searching of the personal materials of Melania and Barron, etc.

The narrative continues to slide and morph. The DOJ and FBI and Garland and the "Executive Branch" referenced in the documents were all hoping this would peak at about 64 days from now. I do not think they can hold the line.

If you are interested in the highlighted sections reference in the intro, please let me know.

[Manetho]

I'm no lawyer and don't know anywhere near all the legal ins and outs, but the judgment sounds nonsensical to me. These documents belong to the executive branch and the presidency that oversees it. Trump is a private citizen now, no matter how deep in denial he is about that, and he has no right to claim any of these documents. Shouldn't they be treated like any other stolen property? What claim does he have over them? And how can executive privilege be used against the executive branch when it's protecting state secrets, i.e., carrying out one of its most basic functions?

[Binger]

I'm no lawyer and don't know anywhere near all the legal ins and outs, but the judgment sounds nonsensical to me. These documents belong to the executive branch and the presidency that oversees it. Trump is a private citizen now, no matter how deep in denial he is about that, and he has no right to claim any of these documents. Shouldn't they be treated like any other stolen property? What claim does he have over them? And how can executive privilege be used against the executive branch when it's protecting state secrets, i.e., carrying out one of its most basic functions?

What documents? The FBI took his private property, apparently.

[Gunnar]

I still can't see that this special master motion had any real purpose other than to delay as much as possible the investigation and prosecution of Trump for his crimes and enable him to eventually get away Scott free.