Judging Freedom - Mar-A-Lago FBI Search - the Latest

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

The Mara Lago search - Where are we? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-fbi-fourth-amendment-special-master-attorney/ #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 for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, August 22, 2022. It's about 1140 in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. What is the latest with the execution by the FBI of a search warrant on the home of former President Donald Trump, which happened two weeks ago today? Well, there are two events which we are waiting for. One is the revelation of the affidavit submitted to the judge days before he signed the search warrant. And the other is a motion which we understand will be filed today by President Trump's lawyers

seeking the appointment of a special master. First, the affidavit. So just to refresh your memory, this case begins when the FBI gets a tip from someone inside Mar-a-Lago, either a planted undercover agent in the employee of Mar-a-Lago or a regular Mar-a-Lago employee who decided to spill the beans on his or her employer, that there were documents pertaining to the subpoena sent by a grand jury seeking documents that the former president took with

him when he left the White House and some were marked top secret and were in the president's safe. All of that is outlined in an affidavit, which the federal process, signed by an FBI agent who actually interviews the witnesses, and which the federal prosecutors present to the judge. Three or four days later, the judge will say, okay, I read this affidavit. Bring the affiant, the person who signed the affidavit, the FBI agent, and your legal team to my chambers. The judge swears the FBI agent in his chambers and interrogates the FBI agent with a stenographer recording what's happening. At the end of the interrogation and having read the affidavit and having listened to the statements made by the

lawyers, the judge agrees on two things. One, it is more likely than not that a crime was committed, and two, it is more likely than not that evidence of the crime is located in the place to be searched or the things to be seized at Mar-a-Lago. Then the attorney general gives the final okay, and the director of the FBI the final okay on the execution of the search warrant. Then 50 unarmed, unheard of to have 50 FBI agents in the same place and only one of them is armed, but the ones actually doing the search are unarmed. Their boss, the head of the search team is armed. 50 unarmed FBI agents show up while the Secret Service

watches and while a locksmith drills into the president's safe. Okay. And then they seized all the documents. Then the media, my former employers, Fox News and ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, newspapers, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, made applications to the judge to unseal the affidavit, the affidavit that the FBI agent signed, which had been sent to the judge a few days before he signed the search warrant. The judge said in oral argument in his courtroom last Thursday, I'd like to unseal it. I recognize that there's information in there that the public can't have because you're still conducting an investigation. I don't want witnesses intimidated. So federal prosecutors redact, white out or black out, whatever means they're going to use, identifying information from the affidavit.

Federal prosecutors, Your Honor, if we do that, the affidavit will be meaningless because we have to black out more than we leave. Well, let's see what's meaningless to you might be meaningful to the media. So on Thursday, with some back and forth going on behind the scenes as I speak between the federal prosecutors and the judge himself over what should be redacted and what should be released, on Thursday we expect to see an affidavit, the same affidavit that was filed with the judge, redacted with proper names and other identifying information blacked out so the public can't see it. Over the weekend, President Trump, one of President Trump's lawyers, Jim Trustee, T-R-S-T-G-R-S-U-T-Y, whom I know, said we're going to file a motion for a special master. Well, what's that? to examine the documents that the FBI seized and decide which are truly personal,

go right back to President Trump and shouldn't have been seized, which are attorney-client privilege, go right back to President Trump because they shouldn't have been seized, and which are properly the subject of the search warrant, which the government gets to keep until they're finished. Well, it's too late. The federal government has already seen everything that was seized from President Trump's house. If you think they've taken the wrong materials, and if you think they've taken materials that are subject to a privilege, attorney-client privilege, executive privilege, or personal private property that have nothing to do with what the government's looking for outside the scope of the search warrant, you have to move immediately before the judge.

You have to file that motion for the appointment of a special master while the search is going on. And if the court grants the motion, and most courts will, then the FBI does not deliver the documents to the federal prosecutors who dispatch them. They deliver the documents to the special master who decides what's personal, what's subject to the attorney-client privilege, what's subject to the executive privilege, privilege, and what goes to the federal prosecutors. But to file that motion now is too little and two weeks too late. The feds have already examined everything. They already know what's top secret. They already know what's top secret SCI, documents that can only be examined in a government facility in which Wi-Fi doesn't work and through which there can be no surveillance. They already know if there's attorney-client

privilege documents in there that they've seen. So you can go ahead and file that motion for the appointment of a special master. I don't know who would accept the job at this point because, as I said, it's too little too late. More on this as we get it. Justin Politano for Judging Freedom.