Judging Freedom - DOJ done reviewing Trump Documents (1)

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

DOJ tells judge it already reviewed Trump documents https://www.foxnews.com/politics/just... #Trump #FBI #investigationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, August 29, 2022. It's about 10 minutes after 3 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Over the weekend, the Justice Department, in response to an application filed by former President Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case, made a number of interesting revelations. Just to refresh everybody's memory, President Trump's lawyers, about a week and a half ago, filed an application to a federal judge to have a special master appointed, often a retired judge, to whom all the documents and materials taken from the former president's home would be surrendered. The special master would then go through those documents and

decide if any are subject to the attorney-client privilege, executive privilege, personal and not subject to the search warrant, or if any of the materials are potentially evidence of crime and are subject to the search warrant. When former President Trump's lawyers made that application, it was so poorly prepared, so filled with political rhetoric that the judge rejected it. The judge didn't deny it. The judge said, take this back and file it properly. I'll give you until Thursday, last Thursday. Late Thursday night, they filed a more appropriate request for a special master.

When they made the initial filing, a lot of us said, well, this is too little too late. The DOJ and the intelligence community are going to go through these documents as quickly as they can. They're not sitting around in a government secure facility waiting. The government is going through these immediately. And if you want a special master in a case like this, you have to file the application while the search is going on so that the FBI gets into their truck with all of your documents. They don't bring them to the DOJ. they bring them to the special master. Trump's people waited too long. They filed an appropriate application on Thursday evening. On Saturday evening, I know, an unusual time for a judge to make a ruling. I think once in my life I made a ruling on a Saturday, in my

entire judicial career, I made a ruling on a Saturday evening. On Saturday evening, the federal judge, not the one who signed the warrant, but the one to whom Trump's application to appoint a special master was assigned, in my view, a mistake by the court system. It should all be done by the same judge, which is the way it's done in the rest of the country. But anyway, this federal judge soon was assigned said, I am likely to appoint a special master just on the basis of fairness involved and the allegations former President Trump has made. But I need to hear from the government. Last night, a Sunday night, the government filed documents with this judge, the one to whom the application for the special master was assigned. And they said, we've already looked at everything. You can assign a special

master, but we've gone through everything. We have found a number of documents that we believe are attorney-client privilege. We're reviewing them more carefully, and we're in the process of returning them. So this is the fault of Trump's lawyers. You know, Douglas MacArthur once said, there's only two reasons for a defeat in warfare, too little, too late. That's what happened here, too little, too late. If Trump had been represented by lawyers who were familiar with this process, they would have made an application for a special master. Three weeks ago today, the Monday that the search was going on, while the search was going on, before anything left Trump's property. But they waited two weeks to file it. They botched the filing. They filed another one.

I don't know what this judge is going to do now. She'd be hard pressed to appoint a special master now. First of all, she has to find a special master who has a top secret national security clearance. That would be very difficult to find. And secondly, she can't pull the documents back from the intelligence community. So I don't know where this is going to go. But all of it happened because Trump's lawyers moved too late. Look, this is the beginning of this process. If you think the president should win ultimately, things do not look good for him. However, the absence or the presence of a special master is just going to make the president get back his personal belongings,

some of which have been returned, like his passports, expired and active, and documents evidencing his communications with his lawyers. But expect the feds to play a hard ball on this. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.