Judging Freedom - AG Garland names Special Counsel in Trump criminal probes

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, November 18th, 2022. It's about three o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. The Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, just made a dramatic announcement, one that none of us who follow these things actually expected, and that is the appointment of a special counsel to investigate and, if appropriate, to prosecute former President Donald Trump in two areas.

We'll run the clip from Attorney General Garland in a minute, but just so you know what's coming, the independent counsel is Jack Smith. He's not in this clip because he happens to be in Europe right now in The Hague prosecuting a case, but he is a serious, seasoned, hardened prosecutor. So the DOJ is very serious by doing this. The two cases, of course, are did President Trump, former President Trump, or anyone else in concert with him interfere with the effort to count the electoral ballot votes on around January 6th. The second is, did President Trump or anyone in concert with him illegally remove from the White House, retain and move around national security documents, and did President Trump or anyone in concert with him hide those documents from Department of Justice investigators and FBI agents.

So here's the clip of Attorney General Garland, and then I'll give you a little bit deeper explanation. The investigation into whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021. The second is the ongoing investigation involving classified documents and other presidential records, as well as the possible obstruction of that investigation referenced and described in court filings in a pending matter in the Southern District of Florida. Okay, so two criminal investigations. There are about a half a dozen criminal investigations of Donald Trump as we speak. One of them is in being conducted by the

Attorney General of New York, so that's a state prosecution. If there's going to be a prosecution, she's prosecuting the Attorney General. The Trump organization, not the former president. But obviously a lot of information is coming out in that case that's negative to the president. So that's a state investigation and perhaps prosecution. And then there is the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta. She is investigating whether President Trump and his colleagues or anybody in concert with him engaged in a scheme to present fake electors, people who weren't truly elected by the voters of the state of Florida as electors to the electoral college who would cast their ballots for Trump, even though the majority, the official tabulation is that the majority of voters in 2020 in Georgia went for President Biden by about 11,800 votes. So those are the two areas of

investigation. Now, why would he do this well there will be allegations that the DOJ is politicized that Donald Trump is running for president as he runs for president he's going to be attacking the incumbent president which he has every right to do all of us does and it would it would appear unseemly if the DOJ, theoretically run by the current president, Joe Biden, was pursuing investigations in order to silence the guy trying to run against him. So by removing this by one step from the DOJ, I'll explain what that means in a minute, the government believes that it will lessen the opportunity for criticism that the DOJ has been weaponized. Now I say we're moving by one step. So what does the special prosecutor have? I mean, he'll have a team of 25 or 30 lawyers. He'll have a team of 25 or 30 FBI agents. He'll

have a team of intelligence experts telling him what these documents mean and if they can tell whether or not the documents were shown to someone who does not have a classified clearance to look at them. Will this delay things? Yes, it will delay things. This prosecutor, Jack Smith, is currently a prosecutor in The Hague in Europe prosecuting war crimes. So he's got to stop what he's doing there, come here, get up to speed. There are probably a million pages, a million pages of documents accumulated already in both investigations. The investigation of January 6th and the investigation of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. So we don't know where this is going to go. This is Merrick Garland being his usual

cautious, careful self. Is it necessary? No. Will it lessen the political criticism? Eh, probably a little bit. I've argued, and I don't say this with glee, that the evidence of President Trump's guilt on the Mar-a-Lago documents case is overwhelming, and he will surely be indicted for that. The other case is a little iffy, and I don't know what evidence the government has accumulated. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.