Rolling Stone Magazine is running with the story that Trump has ordered his lawyers to get those top secret documents back. Essentially, it confirms what the New York Times wrote about Trump claiming those stolen top secret documents were “mine.” You know the documents that were never at Mar-a-Lago, then they were planted during the search by the FBI, and now Trump is claiming that the secrets he stole are his (I keep thinking of Daffy Duck during his greedy moments with Bugs Bunny).
I know I’m insulting Daffy Duck with that comparison.
Anyway, here is some of the ignorance, stupidity, and insanity we have all come to expect out of the Orange Ape:
IN THE WEEKS after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, former President Donald Trump repeatedly made a simple-sounding but extraordinary ask: he wanted his lawyers to get “my documents” back from federal law enforcement.
Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover “all” of the official documents that Trump has long referred to as “mine” — including the highly sensitive and top secret ones.
Sources close to Trump agree with outside legal experts that such a sweeping legal maneuver would be a long-shot, at best. “I hate to break it to the [former] president, but I do not think he is going to get all [the] top-secret documents back,” says one Trump adviser. “That ship has probably sailed.”
Rolling Stone is being way too kind to Trump’s legal team. “A sweeping legal maneuver would be long-shot at best”? I freely admit to being no lawyer, but it has been hammered into my brain from MSNBC and other news sources the following:
- These documents are GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. NARA is in charge of getting these documents back to their rightful place (the National Security Council, CIA, and FBI for starters).
- Executive privilege goes away when you are no longer president. It is up to the PRESENT PRESIDENT to exert executive privilege. And Biden is not going to do anything to help Trump.
- Holding onto these documents by an ex-president is AGAINST THE LAW.
But none of that seems to daunt Trump’s legal team:
Still, the former president’s legal team appears to be working to retrieve at least some of the papers seized during the Aug. 8 federal search. In recent days, the Trump team — led by former federal prosecutor Evan Corcoran — has been quietly prepping additional legal arguments and strategies to try to pry back material that the feds removed from the ex-president’s Florida abode and club, the sources say. Those measures include drafting a so-called “Rule 41(g) motion,” which allows “a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property” to “move for the property’s return,” according to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
A search warrant that was obtained legally after months of failed negotiation to get the documents back is now some “unlawful search and seizure of property”? Once again, THEY ARE NOT TRUMP’S PROPERTY! How many times does this have to be repeated?
This motion will be on top of the laughable motion he made this week to another judge for a “special master.” And lawyers are laughing their ass off about how God awful this latest motion is:
“The motion he already filed is so absolutely terrible, that it’s hard to contemplate him filing something even more aggressive and even more unlikely to succeed,” says Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor.
“However,” White added, Trump is “basically trying to litigate the ultimate issue in the case, which is whether he had the right to possess and keep those things, even after he was asked to return them. It’s very unlikely that the court would accept that invitation to litigate that…He would have to prove that those things were illegally taken, and — based on what we know — that is going to be very difficult to prove…He’s going to have to make some very unusual legal arguments, which, if they’re anything like the motion that was just filed, is going to be a very uphill climb.”
I think that is lawyer speak for, “You are out of your fuckin’ mind.”
I believe A.B. Stoddard said it best today about Trump’s latest legal motions. They are simply done to show his MAGA idiots that Trump is “fighting” and to keep grifting them for money. The MAGA crowd knows less than I do about the law, which to be honest is near zero for me.
I swear I think it would be better if judges could dismiss cases by using their gavel to hit lawyers over the head. Maybe physical pain would keep hacks like Trump has to clog up the legal system with more bullshit “legal motions”? Frankly, we are seening what happens when the legal system allows a wealthy man to have manipulated the system for so long that he believes he is always right.