Judging Freedom - Judge Unseals less redacted version of Trump Affidavit

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Judge unseals less redacted version of affidavit used for Mar-a-Lago search warrant https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/13/politics/less-redacted-mar-a-lago-affidavit/index.html #Trump #fbi See 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 with a special evening breaking news, Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 13th, 2022. It's about 6.30 in the evening. About 45 minutes ago, Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal district court judge in Florida, currently in charge, or to whom currently, the case of Donald Trump versus the United States of America has been assigned. That's the case in which Trump asked the court to appoint a special master, and she agreed to do so, and then both sides ultimately agreed on the person. So this same judge, without giving reasons and without notice, suddenly released portions of the FBI affidavit, which was submitted to another judge, Judge Bruce Reinhart, the one who signed the search warrant

authorizing and directing the FBI to enter Trump's home last month. Now, after that happened, Judge Reinhart agreed to release portions of the affidavit. He agreed with the government as to what portions would be redacted, blocked out, prevented from release, and what portions would be released. And that basically described the story with which we are all familiar. The National Archives learned that President Trump took government property with him when he left. And the National Archives suspected that the property consisted of top secret documents, because when they asked Trump for it back, he said, I'll give some of it back. The rest of it's mine. His words, it's mine. But what he did get back

contained national defense information and top secret classified material. The National Archives didn't know what to do with it, so they called the FBI, which looked at it, which sent it to federal prosecutors who convened a grand jury to investigate how these materials got to Trump's home. The special, the grand jury sent a subpoena to president Trump and he complied, partially complied with the subpoena. Then prosecutors went to the president's home at his invitation. And at the end of that meeting, Trump's lawyers said, we're giving you everything that you asked for in the subpoena. Well, we now know that that didn't happen,

that the lawyers made a material misrepresentation, either knowingly or unknowingly, to the government about what was returned. What we learned tonight is not very helpful for President Trump, which brings me back to my initial comment. I don't know why Judge Cannon released this. First of all, federal judges are not allowed to issue any decisions other than on-the-spot rulings in a courtroom on objections and motions made during a trial without giving reasons for it and without reducing the reasons to writing. Judge Cannon said in an oral argument she was thinking of releasing portions of the redacted document, but she didn't give reasons for it. So what she did tonight, she just released it.

So she violated very profound rules that require federal judges to give reasons. Why do they have to give reasons? So that the litigants know why the judge did what she did, so they can decide whether or not it is worthy of appealing. I don't know who would appeal this. Perhaps Trump's people would appeal it, even though the president said he wanted the full, or the former president said he wanted the full affidavit released. What did we learn tonight that we didn't already know? Very little. But what we did learn is not good news for President Trump.

We learned that among the documents that were surrendered to the grand jury pursuant to the subpoena. So we have the first surrender to the National Archives. We have the second so-called surrender to the federal prosecutors. That's the one where one of Trump's lawyers said, we've given you everything. And we have the surrender to the grand jury, which I'll discuss in a minute. And then we have the documents that were seized by the FBI. What was surrendered to the grand jury was the government's most secret documents. Why is this bad news for Trump? It would be impossible for him to claim that he didn't know that he had it. How secret were they? Well,

they were FISA court documents. That's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It's almost inconceivable that the president would have had those because that's a function between the DOJ and the judiciary. There were also documents there involving human intelligence. Again, the names of foreign agents typically working for a foreign government in a foreign country who have become double agents and work for us. And there were transcripts of surveillance, telephonic and email surveillance of foreign officials. All of this is the most classified, most highly protected information the government has. If it pertains to defense information, then it's NDI, and so it doesn't matter whether or not it is classified. Bad news for the former president.

No reason given for releasing it, but right in my wheelhouse, which is why I'm in front of the camera now explaining it to you. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.