Judging Freedom - DOJ - Trump Hasn’t Returned All Documents

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

Trump Hasn’t Returned All Documents, DOJ Officials Believe Outreach by official indicates that the government could be seeking to retrieve more records https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-ha... #Trump #doj #documentsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It's like the last day of summer here. It's absolutely magnificent. There's not a cloud in the sky. There's no humidity. It's about 75 degrees, but fall is coming tomorrow. The temperature is going down to the 40s, and that, of course, will accelerate leaf peepers as the leaves around here begin to turn color. More bad news for former President Trump. The National Archives has told the DOJ and apparently demonstrated to the DOJ that no matter how thorough the FBI was when they executed a search warrant on the former president's home, and no matter how unthorough the president's people were before the search warrant, when they said, here, we've given you everything,

and one of the lawyers certified under oath that there were no longer documents belonging to the government at Mar-a-Lago, the DOJ has told Trump's lawyers that the DOJ and the National Archives don't have everything that Trump took with him by way of documents. How do they know that? Well, there's a system in the White House that documents the documents. So the president has a piece of paper in his hand. There's a computer record made of that paper, and then there's tracing that goes on as to where the paper ends up. So the National Archives has a record of everything that Trump supposedly touched and supposedly took, and they have a record of what he voluntarily returned and what was seized from him,

and there's still a gap in those records. So the DOJ has basically said to Trump's lawyers, we know you guys have more, let us have it, and Trump's lawyers have fallen into two camps. The Chris Kise camp, K-I-S-E, that's the $3 million retainer, former federal prosecutor, who in my opinion knows exactly what he's doing, has said, give them what they want because they're going to get it one way or another and negotiate with them. We can lower the temperature here. That's one camp amongst Trump's lawyers. The other camp, and I don't know who leads it, is fight them tooth and nails, admit nothing, concede nothing, acknowledge nothing, and continue attacking the DOJ, the 11th Circuit, Judge Deary, the FBI in public. It is the latter, the get tough or stay tough team that has prevailed. So when the DOJ says to Trump's lawyers, where are the rest of the documents that basically say,

go take a hike, you have everything. Well, the DOJ can prove statistically and mathematically that items that left the White House before on or before January 20th, 2021, have not been returned. So what should they do? Well, they can push Trump in a corner. They can get, I believe, Judge Cannon or the special master, Judge Deary, to issue an order requiring Trump to certify under oath that he doesn't have any more documents. He'll never do that because that would probably be an act of perjury. And the failure to do that would allow the court and the DOJ to infer that notwithstanding what the lawyers are saying, he still has documents, he knows what they are, and he knows where they are.

One of them is a handwritten letter from Kim Jong-il. I don't know how national security related that is, but I do know how valuable that would be, which is why it is federal government property and not Donald J. Trump's property. That's not me. That's the law. That's the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and the Supreme Court's interpretation of it. In the meanwhile, we are waiting for a ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on whether the special master is lawful. In the meanwhile, we are waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether or not it will hear an appeal of a portion of what the 11th Circuit ordered, but not the most critical portion. The most critical portion of what the 11th Circuit

ordered is that the DOJ can use the documents it seized in its investigation. It can continue its investigation. It can share those documents with a grand jury. It can show them to experts, and the FBI can investigate whether or not those documents ever left Mar-a-Lago. I don't know how they'll know that and how they investigate it, but that's what they do. Trump's people failed. Trump's lawyers failed miserably to appeal to the rest of the 11th Circuit, not the three judges who ruled against them, but all 11 on that court or to the nine members of the Supreme Court. Trump's lawyers failed miserably to appeal that section of the 11th Circuit's ruling.

And now it's too little and too late for them to appeal it. So that's where we are. Expect news this week. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.