BREAKING: Court Throws Out Special Master For Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Documents Case

Normally you wait for the prosecutor to bring a criminal case against you and then challenge the introduction of the evidence obtained by that illegal search.

The President has the ultimate power to determine what is sensitive and what isn’t.

Now SCOTUS will take up the appeal.

And have at it GARLANDIA .....you are fueling the engines of a tremendous MAGA campaign.

The President has the ultimate power to determine what is sensitive and what isn’t.

That's begging the question. Were none of the MAL documents sensitive?

>>The president has to appoint literally hundreds of people to many, many positions practically down to the level of ‘federal dog catcher’.

Trump replaced Chris Christie as head of his transition team after the election. Christie was replaced by Pence, and Trump’s children and son-in-law were named to the executive committee.

Replacing Christie might have been a good idea, but they also threw out all the work done since May, which left them with no plan. And they didn’t have the teams ready to start work with the outgoing managers in each department on the details of the transition.

And Trump himself basically had no clue as to how the federal government was organized and how to manage it.

Another lawless court that cares nothing about DOJ lawlessness. The DOJ clearly broke the law and the court is defending them. 20 plus years ago the 11th circuit was fairly conservative. Soros and the libs then set to work to infiltrate, and fill it with flaming leftists. All of its decisions now are on the side of lawlessness and evil.

So we're assuming none of these documents were sensitive?

I'm not sure what you mean by "sensitive", but the President has the absolute right to declassify anything he wishes. I personally think "declassifying just by thinking about it" was a terrible argument right from the start. I view that kind of the same way I (and the legal system) view a judgement in court -- it isn't official until it is entered on the journal. Just "deciding" what the judgment is doesn't cut it.

He has a history of relying on bad legal counsel and but the rigged casino he’s playing in hasn’t give him many choices.

? There's no reason he shouldn't have been able to hire first-rate legal counsel except that he would be an absolute nightmare as a client, and top lawyers don't want to deal with that. So to the extent he has had to rely on bad legal counsel...that's on him.

McConnell’s too dumb to play the long game - his Chinese masters tell him what to play and when.

THey’re not Trump judges, they are McConnell judges.

I'm not sure what you mean by "sensitive", but the President has the absolute right to declassify anything he wishes.

I mean sensitive as in risky to national security. He can declassify things but that doesn’t make them harmless.

Would he declassify a sensitive document just so he could take it home with him?

They were all chosen and trained by the Federalist Society. They’re just not quite as conservative as everyone had thought they were.

If it is potentially damaging to national security, then it is going to be classified at some level. And yes, the President always has the power to waive it.

The warrant was based on Fake Probable Cause.

It's kind of tough to argue that when they actually found documents that were the subject of the warrant.

Also, after reading that decision, it seems like he has pretty bad lawyers. The 11th Circuit took a few swipes at the quality of the arguments advanced by his attorneys.

If it is potentially damaging to national security, then it is going to be classified at some level. And yes, the President always has the power to waive it.

If Trump had declassified everything like you suggested odds are good he would have declassified potentially damaging things - just so he could take them home.

In this case it doesn't really matter because according to the warrant they're using the Espionage Act which doesn't rely on the documents being classified - only potentially damaging to national security.

Not necessarily bad lawyers . . . just an unwinnable set of facts with no good arguments to be made.

Not necessarily bad lawyers . . . just an unwinnable set of facts with no good arguments to be made.

Fair point...but they're still making them. And I guess my point is that fear of being put in that position is why Trump has a hard time attracting better lawyers.

I mean, nobody likes turning down billable hours, but I don't know many guys who'd want to jump on that grenade. As it is, there looks to be some awkwardness with the affidavits that were executed claiming everything had been turned over. It'd be awful to be in that position and getting pressured by your very high-profile client to sign something with which you are not comfortable.

In this case it doesn't really matter because according to the warrant they're using the Espionage Act which doesn't rely on the documents being classified - only potentially damaging to national security.

I don't think a claim under the Espionage Act that involved unclassified materials would be brought, and if it was, it would be shot down very quickly under the First Amendment. It doesn't sound like the Espionage Act is really on the table because there isn't a claim that he actually did disclose them to anyone else.

Well, it's one of the statutes they cited in getting the warrant and it doesn't rely on classification or disclosure. Posession and/or retention is enough.

"The Espionage Act does not define national defense information, but courts have elaborated on its meaning. In a 1941 decision, Gorin v. United States, the Supreme Court agreed with the interpretation that national defense is a “generic concept of broad connotations, relating to the military and naval establishments and the related activities of national preparedness.” Lower courts have since stated that, to qualify as national defense information, the information must be “closely held” and its disclosure “potentially damaging” to the United States or useful to its adversaries. Those accused of violating the Congressional Research Service 3 Espionage Act have argued that the statute is unconstitutionally vague because it does not provide sufficiently clear standards for people of common intelligence to determine whether information in their possession qualifies as national defense information. In Gorin, however, the Supreme Court concluded that the statute’s state-of-mind (or mens rea) requirements had a delimiting effect that gave what was otherwise potentially problematic language enough definitiveness to pass constitutional muster.
Section 793 is divided into several subsections with technical and legal distinctions. The affidavit supporting the warrant focuses on subsection (e), which applies when an individual is in unauthorized possession of certain national defense information. Section 793(e) creates penalties for willfully disclosing or attempting to disclose that information. It also prohibits willfully retaining national defense information and failing to deliver it to the proper official."

I think getting an indictment against Trump using this would be a stretch but my larger point is the whole classification discussion is a bit of a red herring.

None of the potential crimes used to get the warrant required classification.

My other point is for Trump to declassify sensitive material just so he could legally take it home, even if it threatened national security, would be pretty weak.

Information that isn’t classified isn’t going to be considered “closely-held”.