As we noted earlier, a judge has signaled that she’s likely to grant the request of the Trump team to appoint a special master.
The special master would examine the documents to determine if any fall outside the scope of the raid, such as if they are privileged documents, thus providing some protection to the documents that they shouldn’t have seized; one example would be documents that might be protected under attorney-client privilege.
There are however a couple of problems. First, the FBI has already had them for 20 days at this point — who knows what might have been compromised by now with this fishing expedition?
Plus, the Biden team now has another avenue to the documents that may be even more troubling, if what had gone on wasn’t wild enough already.
The director of national intelligence is preparing to review the items recovered during the FBI search of at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month, CBS News has learned.
In a letter sent to congressional leaders Friday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said her office would conduct a “classification review of relevant materials.”
“The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are working together to facilitate a classification review of relevant materials, including those recovered during the search,” Haines wrote. “ONDI will also lead an Intelligence Community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents.
Let’s just wait. The FBI conducted a fishing expedition raid and now, they’re going to have a Biden appointee, a protege of former CIA head John Brennan, walk her way through the Trump documents that may include privileged information. Even worse is the FBI going through them. A political appointee is going to be the one to determine how “damaging” the documents are. It sounds as though that would be an honest assessment. We don’t know if FISA documents, or any other document that could have been detrimental to the government will just vanish. That’s why an independent special master is so important here.
Mike Davis, former Chief Counsel for Nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, founder and president of the Article III Project and a former Gorsuch law clerk, blasted the move, asking where was the “damage assessment” for what was on Hillary Clinton’s private server and all those classified documents that she could not declassify as Trump could?
1. The documents were lawfully classified by President Trump and he took his own copy.
2. Ex-presidents had federal staff and security clearances. They also have secure offices and Secret Service protection.
3. Where’s the (political) “damage assessment” for Hillary’s hacked illegal home server? https://t.co/wgdcYRMt42
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 27, 2022
Where’s the damage assessment in regard to Hunter and Jim Biden? Davis responds.
4. Where’s the “damage assessment” after clear evidence indicating President Biden, his son Hunter, and his brother James were on Chinese and Ukrainian payrolls?
5. Trump has taken his Crossfire Hurricane documents, which are clearly political clean-ups. https://t.co/mdqN2qB4yz
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 27, 2022
They should have acted immediately if they were so urgent. Otherwise, it would be a waste of time to wait for months before retrieving the documents.
6. If these (declassified, personal) records were so dangerous in President Trump’s possession, why did:
– President Biden wait 18 months to retrieve them?
– AG Merrick Garland deliberate “for weeks” before obtaining (illegal) warrant?
– He wait 3 days to execute warrant?
🤔
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 27, 2022
As I wrote earlier, the affidavit revealed they thought there were documents with classification markings on them in the storage room and they told the Trump team in a letter on June 8 to keep the documents in the storage room that the FBI later tried to say wasn’t secure, rather than just taking the documents or having NARA get them. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. That doesn’t sound like there was any urgency or any real risk to the documents. More like it was a pretext to pursue documents.
A couple of additional notes about Avril Haines. She was the one who decided not to discipline anyone in the CIA for spying on the Senate who was looking into the CIA’s torture programs in a huge scandal during the Obama Administration. Brennan lied about it at the time and said it hadn’t happened. They were slammed by Senator Dianne Feinstein at the time. Where’s the damage assessment on that?
Haines also stood by John Brennan during Trump’s attempt to revoke his security clearance.
Avril Haines is John Brennan that I recognize. He speaks about integrity and his tireless efforts to protect the country. Every meeting and every organization he was a member of has reflected his commitment to ethical standards. He is an extraordinary person
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) August 20, 2018
This assessment is so delusional! It raises doubts about her objectivity, and the nature of what she would do in such an assessment.
We hope that Congress or the judge, who suggested she may appoint special masters, intervenes.