FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024
re: Public being able to listen to a hearing…Anecdotally, I can say during the election “fraud” trials a Court in Pennsylvania offered a public dial in number. It was for public interest purposes and not unusual in that regard. It’s typically limited (that one was 5,000). I called in (caller 4,999) as I was interested in what was really going on…I hung up 15mins in as Giuliani was basically saying the same things he was saying in public (more politely, though) and very clueless and nonresponsive about the actual legal issues he was there for (e.g., Judge: What standard of review should I use here to make my decision? A: In Ohio, there is a video showing tons of ballots…, Judge: We are in Pennsylvania, What standard of review…; etc.)
I’m not clear on appellate level, but I presume the same reasoning applies.
In general run of the mill situations I can also say here in Harris County (Houston) several district courts have as a matter of policy a livestream of their courts 24/7 and anyone can watch all the hearings and trials anytime they want. It’s quite boring.
I tried to call in, but all the circuits were busy. Then I tried to find anyone who might be live-streaming the call, but only found reports that none of the callers were muted, which made listening to the actual proceedings impossible. I’m hopeful that some news outlet or another will report on it later today.
If none of the callers were muted, that indicates this particular court does not do this very often. It’s conference call 101 stuff. By now, we have done this enough to know how to handle remote hearings, etc. They would typically be “auto” muted and not have an option to unmute (versus say a normal zoom hearing or call where it’s up to the participant to mute/unmute).
Edited and bolded your post for my clarity.
I know you were condensing DOJ’s argument, but is DOJ really stating they do not know if the documents contain NDI? Seems important because otherwise the documents aren’t all that important, and we’ve been told they are very important, so I must be missing something.
And is Trump claiming it’s presumption to assume the documents are NDI, or that they are classified (or both)?
For anyone wondering, and I know it’s been stated, but NDI means documents that relate to national security (10 U.S. Code § 8720, NDI refers to defense, industrial, and military emergency energy requirements relative to national safety, welfare and the economy, relating to foreign military or economic actions.)
I of course am jumping into this thread and haven’t been following for a week so I’m probably missing something.
The best part of the bit I read was this phrase:
The ironiquotes are wonderful enough – “Ha ha, as if, ‘classified,’ gimme a break!” But that word “unilaterally” is just perfect.
Y’all know that classifying records is usually done by consensus, right? Everyone involved–including the government, the ACLU, and the subject of the records–sits in a circle on the floor, and everyone who agrees the records should be classified twinkles their fingers. How dare the government have some new process where they classify records unilaterally? How dare they???
Here’s their argument for why they need those documents (from their appeal)
Absent a partial stay, the government and the public will be irreparably harmed. The district court’s order irreparably harms the government and the public by (A) interfering with the government’s response to the national-security risks arising from the mishandling and possible disclosure of records bearing classification markings; (B) impairing a criminal investigation into these critical national-security matters; and (C) forcing the government to disclose highly sensitive materials as part of the special- master review.
I don’t know if its intentionally vague or if that’s just how these things are usually written. They do say the documents are “highly sensitive” here, but for the most part the contents are simply implied. If they did not contain NDI, they would not be “responding to national security risks,” one can assume.
The response from Trump’s lawyers says:
The Government again presupposes that the documents it claims are classified are, in fact, classified and their segregation is inviolable. However, the Government has not yet proven this critical fact.
The document also uses scare quotes around every instance of the word “classified”.
eta: Neither filing mentions NDI or national security information or anything like that. Trump just insists that they’re his personal property and winks at the fact that they may have been declassified.
Now Trusty is asking about getting security clearance process started. Judge says he thought of that earlier but adds: 'It's not just a matter of having clearance. It's a matter of need to know...if you need to know you, will know.'
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) September 20, 2022
Big from Dearie:
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) September 20, 2022
He presses Trump’s lawyers on what he’s supposed to do. The government provided “prima facie evidence” of classification, ie, the markings.
“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it.”
This Judge is not playing around! I wish i could hear this live.
Special Master Has a Simple Test That May Be Disaster for Trump (yahoo.com)
The special master, Raymond J. Dearie, said Tuesday that if Trump’s lawyers don’t officially counter whether the documents the former president took are classified, then Dearie will side with the DOJ.
“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it,” he said…
[W]hile Trump has been alleging on social media that he already declassified the records he swiped from the White House, Dearie is demanding that Trump put up or shut up. The senior judge is asking that Trump’s team assert—in sworn affidavits where lies could mean jail time—whether or not Trump actually declassified them…
When Trump lawyer James M. Trusty argued his team “shouldn’t be in a position where we have to disclose… declassification defenses,” Dearie wasn’t having any of it.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it,” Dearie shot back.
EDIT: Ninja’d by MulderMuffin!
Thanks for the response. Seems odd, but I’m certainly missing something and that’s because I haven’t read much lately.
This argument only applies to the espionage act investigation and DOJ is not just investigating the espionage act.
One of the crimes listed in the search warrant is obstruction (1519) and one act of obstruction they are almost certainly investigating is Trump’s defiance of the May subpoena which specifically requested documents, “with classified markings.”
In the June meeting they turned over a handful of docs with classified markings. And here’s where the obstruction part comes in… Christina Bobb gave a sworn statement that there were no more documents responsive to the subpoena at Mar-a-lago. Evan Corcoran also made a statement to the FBI that he had done a diligent search for responsive docs and had turned over everything he found.
The documents DOJ seized in August bearing classification markings, regardless of actual classification status, are evidence of obstruction simply for having classification markings, and no one is disputing that some documents have classification markings.
For the obstruction investigation, classification status is completely irrelevant. The documents were responsive to the subpoena because they bore classification markings, and the documents are evidence of obstruction because they were responsive to the subpoena.
Here’s some language from the request for stay to that effect.
In any event, even if Plaintiff had asserted in court that he declassified the records, the government would still need to review the records to assess that claim, and they would still have been responsive to the grand-jury subpoena for all records “bearing classification markings.”
Dearie was one of two Trump nominees for special master. The nomination, which the DOJ readily agreed to, caused a fair bit of surprise because, among other things, Dearie had approved FISA surveillance warrants against one of Trump’s campaign advisors, causing Trump to froth at the mouth about FISA and the “Deep State”. So why did Trump nominate Dearie? I can only surmise that, as always, Trump is being advised by “the best people”. I wonder how long before he demands that Dearie be fired, something that Trumpie feels is always his prerogative.
Pure speculation on my part, but I believe it could have been at the insistence of his attorneys. They’ve demonstrated they’re only willing to go so far in appeasing the clown show.
I imagine they basically told Trump, “Look, we’ll put your obvious clown, Paul Huck, Jr., on the list, but we’re going to put a serious judge as an option, too. If you refuse, find new attorneys.”
IOW, Trump is running out of people willing to go to jail for him.
Yes, you are right. I noticed that after I submitted. Cannon had already denied the DOJ motion for relief.
The real mystery is why didn’t Cannon choose Huck, given that she’s obviously in the tank for Trump.
Oh, he will demand such eventually. And motions and counter-motions will be filed, and subsequently argued, giving rise to more motions which will result in more arguments, and so on and so on. In the end, Trump hopes to get what he wants: a long delay until, hopefully, nobody cares anymore, and the matter goes away.
It’s Trump’s MO–wear them down using legal means until they give up or run out of money to pay their lawyers. Except this time, I think the US government has deeper pockets than Trump, people do care, and the matter will not go away no matter how much Trump wishes it will.
You know, I could probably make a case, albeit a very weak one, that even Trump’s medical records, which he claims we among the seized documents, didn’t legally belong to him.
Does anyone remember this incident from 2018, when a bunch of Trump Organization goons barged into the offices of Trump’s crazy doctor and took his medical records.
He was legally entitled to copies but not the originals. The case I’m making is weak because the doctor -even though he went to the press and compared the incident to rape - never filed a police complaint. Also, he or his new doctor, the equally unqualified Ronny Jackson, was entitled to copies of the records. So, it’s possible that the medical records seized were stolen property anyway.
And Trump’s lying mouthpiece, Sara Huckabee Sanders, said committing robbery to transfer medical records to the official presidential doctor was a totally normal thing to do and all Presidents did it.
Now ,once I remembered this, I had a totally wild-assed speculative thought. What if Trump, acting out of the paranoid fear that someone would release his medical info, successfully applied pressure to get his own medical records classified without thinking it through? Probably not, because I think he might have mentioned it by now, but it would make for an amusing sidebar,
Here’s a Tweet from a journalist who attended the special master hearing today.
Doesn’t look like Dearie isn’t buying the, “Maybe they were declassified, who can say?” argument.
She didn’t want to torpedo her career any more than she already has.
See that’s my take on it. I think Trump’s put up Dearie and Huck as a clear “chose Huck” gambit, expecting DOJ to refuse both of the Trump suggestions and Cannon to take the hint.
But when DOJ said they were OK with Dearie it’s very hard for a judge to appoint someone other than the person both sides agreed to.
Possibly with a little bit of “the rubes will believe that Dearie is in the tank for the Deep State - he approved the FISA stuff, right?”. So Trump can play him off as part of the conspiracy when things don’t go his way.