5333 private links
David Rivkin and Lee Casey in WSJ: “if the Justice Department’s sole complaint is that Mr. Trump had in his possession presidential records he took with him from the White House, he should be in the clear, even if some of those records are classified.” //
Someone whose legal analysis I would credit is David Rivkin. I’ve seen him and his team in action, and they are really good. He’s been involved in the notorious Wisconsin John Doe cases representing the conservative victims of the prosecutorial misconduct.
Rivkin and his law partner Lee Casey, had an Op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on August 22, 2022, that confirms my gut instinct that the search warrant was rotten from the get-go, The Trump Warrant Had No Legal Basis. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing at the link:
The materials to be seized included “any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021”—i.e., during Mr. Trump’s term of office. Virtually all the materials at Mar-a-Lago are likely to fall within this category. Federal law gives Mr. Trump a right of access to them. His possession of them is entirely consistent with that right, and therefore lawful, regardless of the statutes the FBI cites in its warrant.
Those statutes are general in their text and application. But Mr. Trump’s documents are covered by a specific statute, the Presidential Records Act of 1978. It has long been the Supreme Court position, as stated in Morton v. Mancari (1974), that “where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.” The former president’s rights under the PRA trump any application of the laws the FBI warrant cites.
