Judging Freedom - Trump Search & Privileged Documents

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Mar-a-Lago Search Turned Up Potentially Privileged Documents, DOJ Says Filter teams have kept some seized documents from investigators, department says in response to judge’s signal she will name special master https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-att... #Trump #fbiSee 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 Wednesday, August, excuse me, Tuesday, August 30th, 2022. It's about 1.30 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. When the FBI executed a search warrant on President Trump's club and home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, the president, of course, was furious at this. 30 FBI agents showed up with a search warrant at six o'clock in the morning. They had previously informed the Secret Service that they were coming. Secret Service said, okay, let's see the warrant. It's a valid warrant.

We're going to let you in. We can't help you, but we certainly won't hinder you. That was the time for the president's lawyers to file an application for the appointment of a special master, an outside expert who does not work for Donald Trump and does not work for the Department of Justice, who would examine each document that the FBI gathered and decided which is subject to attorney-client privilege, which is subject to executive privilege, which is personal and not subject to the search warrant, which is likely evidence of a crime that the FBI was looking for. But because Trump's people waited two weeks to do that, to even announce they were going to do it, by that point, it was too little and too late. If

they had filed the application while the search warrant was going on, and if it had been granted, and it probably would have, then the special master comes into play immediately. And then the FBI is directed by the federal judge, do not bring these documents to the lawyers for the DOJ who sent you here. Rather, bring them to the special master, and the special master will decide where they should go. Now, it's not easy to find such a special master. It would have to be a person with a top secret security clearance, and that person would need to have access to a federal government skiff, one of those places, one of those rare places on the planet where it is legal to view these documents, where Wi-Fi doesn't work, where surveillance doesn't work, where mobile devices don't work. When Trump's people filed their application, it was, it read like a Donald Trump stump speech.

Great if you're in Trump's political base, not so great. If you're a judge, he's trying to persuade. The judge rejected the filing, saying, refile it. Follow the rules. Don't give me this stuff. They refiled it. She read it and said, you made a very good argument. I have to wait to hear what the Justice Department has to say. But I am likely, I am inclined to appoint a special master. That was last Saturday

night. It is now Tuesday afternoon. Yesterday, the Department of Justice filed materials with this federal judge, not the same judge that signed the search warrant, another federal judge, also in Florida, and the documents that the DOJ filed said, we've already examined everything. We've examined everything that the FBI took out of Trump's house. So a special master is too little, too late. And by the way, we did it the right way. We used a filter team. The filter team are DOJ employees, not part of the prosecution team, who decide what we, the prosecutors, can't see, what is truly attorney-client or any other privilege. We are happy to show you what the filter team found. Now, I don't always trust these filter teams. I never did. However, there would have to be some basis

for that mistrust for the judge to reject this now. Now, it is literally too little and too late. Now, the judge cannot order a special master to re-examine all the documents, particularly when they're in the hands of the intelligence community trying to assess what, if any, damage was caused by their removal from the White House and retention at Mar-a-Lago. This doesn't look good for the president, but who knows how these things can end up. I've been around litigation for 45 years. They have many times strange and circuitous paths that cannot be predicted or even anticipated, but it is the job of good lawyers to be prepared for any eventuality in litigation. Mr. President, I speak to Donald Trump. Get yourself some good lawyers. Judge Napolitano for judging

freedom.