“Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” — old adage
Donald Trump wanted the Special Master to investigate details of the Mar-a-Lago execution of search warrant because he foresaw that role as “ally” somebody who would push the narrative in his direction and be on his side.
Wrong. At least that’s not how it’s working out so far. Today is Day One and the Special Master has already appeared to signal the Trump team has little ground to stand on. Not what Trumpty hoped for, that’s for damn sure. Alternet:
Judge Dearie is tasked with determining which, if any of the more than 11,000 items federal agents seized from Mar-a-Lago should be returned to the former president, or be singled out over attorney-client privilege claims. He was directed to focus first on the 100 or so that DOJ wants to use to continue their investigation, and to use to determine how badly national security has been harmed.
Trump is making many claims including that the items are covered by executive privilege, attorney-client privilege, were declassified, were reclassified as personal records, and others.
“This is not a criminal case; this is a civil matter,” said Judge Dearie, early into Tuesday afternoon’s hearing. […]
In other words, Judge Dearie is suggesting if the Trump team is refusing to give him proof of which documents were declassified, which they are refusing to do, he will be forced to take the Dept. of Justice’s word.
Attorney Tristan Snell, who successfully prosecuted the Trump University case for the Manhattan DA’s Office, observes: “Judge Dearie makes clear he is taking government’s position that the classified Mar-a-Lago documents are in fact classified. ‘What business is it of the court? … As far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it.’ Trump’s insistence on a special master is NOT going well.”
Later, on the refusal to discus declassification, Judge Dearie told Trump attorney James Trusty, “You can’t have your cake and eat it,” Klasfeld noted.
The Daily Beast reports, “Special Master Raymond Dearie indicated Tuesday that this case could be very simple, and that Trump may be in trouble.”
There you have it. Judge Dearie is not turning out to be the knight errant, here to save Donald Trump. So what happens now? Judge Cannon fires him and appoints somebody else? In all seriousness, as atypical as this entire situation has been so far, that may not be so far fetched.
What Trump wanted was the equivalent of Bill Barr in the role and of course we mean the original “killer” Barr, not the person he became post January 6. He’s not getting that. So logically, one of two things will happen: 1) Trump will replace the Special Master or 2) The Special Master will do the job he was appointed to do, not the one that Trump wants him to do, and make short shrift of the entire matter, because there never was much substance there to begin with.
It will be interesting to see which one happens. Right now I’d say the odds are even.
And again, I call your attention to the fact that this was originally Laura Ingraham’s idea. She may have wanted it not to work out for Trump. Remember, she also said at approximately the same time, that it’s time for America to “turn the page?”
I don’t know all the ins and outs of this, but it seems to me that DRumpf took these documents illegally. Why are they pussyfooting about? Why don’t they just TAKE them back?
Two words: national security. Not only do they need to take these back, but they need to be damn sure the info on such docs is still secure when they do (at least as much as possible). That means they need to eliminate even the smallest mouse hole for Trump to crawl through so he OR his lawyers (one of them, Trusty, asserted he had Top Secret clearance at the hearing) can get copies or even a look at any of them.
Years ago, someone pointed out that you actually can have your cake and [then] eat it. What you cannot do is eat your cake and [then] have it. But of course everyone knows what the phrase actually means.
For clarification on what is actually going on, I recommend looking over Teri Kanefield’s Twitter feed (not so coincidentally, you should also go there if you suffer from the delusion of there being magic wand solutions to ANY of the mess Trump has left us). As for Cannon, I maintain that this is all about a) getting this mess out of her courtroom and b) giving Trump someone else to throw his rage at. She has yet to understand that her career is OVER. Bill Palmer is betting that the extra scrutiny of all her moves will force her to resign in less than a year. Never forget, children, that judges are WAY more vulnerable than ex-presidents.
We all know what happens to Trump’s perfect chocolate cake he eats at Mar-o-golf, and he seems to still be full of it …
Trump cannot possibly survive all this trauma he continues to build … His blind view of his OWN guilt, simple minded stupidity, not ONE ounce of responsibility felt personally for all the deaths he caused of frontline health workers and then about a million US Citizens, because, well Obama showed him the right plan and that made it impossible to do it that way and so he sabotaged the CDC’s pandemic program … To this day, I think he should have been charged and sent to prison as a mass murderer …
Then, of course, he would not have been around to attack our Capitol, all the Proud Boys and other assholes breaking windows and killing cops there would have been having their meetings in the woods, but would not be able to amass such a crowd of AR-15 gun nuts …
When, when, is D.O.J. going to just say “fuck off and die dumbass” to Diapers? When are they just going to tell him he’s an idiot who does not know what in the fuck he’s talking about, he knows nothing about anything, and he will soon be getting three hots and a cot as a preferred customer in one of our penal institutions?
I’d feel pity for his attorneys but if you choose to represent a criminal fool, and you know this from the get-go, you deserve none.
Why do all that, Spike, when they can make damn sure he makes their case for them? Undeed, every move he makes tells them a little more about who he did business with and why. Given that everything he was involved has international players such as Putin and the House of Saud, none of this was ever going to be as simple as your panic keeps saying it is.