The judge who approved the never-before-tried raid on a former president — the raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago manse — has made a tantalizing promise. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart has promised to show a little leg and allow the American public a chance to see why he was induced by the “reliable” stories from the FBI to sign a warrant so investigators could upend convention and history to take presidential documents and go through Melania’s closet.
Instead of stoking more anger in half of the country that sees the raid as yet another example of politicians using the FBI as private security police to carry out naked political acts like Russiagate, Reinhart said in court and again in an order issued this week that he will “reject the Government’s argument that the present record justifies keeping the entire Affidavit under seal.”
That sounds promising to people who believe in equal justice. And maybe we’ll be surprised, as we were when Reinhart released portions of the search warrant, but don’t get too excited. A phalanx of media outlets and Judicial Watch filed motions for the Feds to go all open kimono on the documents, but there might be a “Crying Game” level plot twist at the end.
First of all, prepare yourself. If it is divulged, the affidavit will make Trump look horrible. As in all prosecution documents, there will be no nice words, fan mail, or exculpatory evidence about its target, Donald Trump. The former president called for the affidavit to be made public, so maybe he thought they’d never release it, making it an easy ask, but Trump is also doing the math. How much worse can it get than to make up a story about the sitting president being a Russian spy or personally organizing a riot? What could this information say that’s worse than being impeached over a phone call asking about the Biden family’s sleazy business dealings in Ukraine? The same agent who said Hunter Biden’s oozing laptop entrails were Russian disinformation when they were real, FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten, is also part of this investigation. So, hell yes, it’s going to be bad.
The judge himself once issued a Facebook screed against Trump, and he recently recused himself from a case involving both Trump and the woman who made the Russian collusion hoax possible — the Queen herself, Hillary Clinton.
Why didn’t he recuse himself from this case? What an excellent question.
Second, the judge has put all FBI arguments for suppressing or redacting the documents under seal. Everything could stay there for all we know. Reinhart wrote that he “must still consider whether there is a less onerous alternative to sealing the entire document.” Oh, okay. But “the Government argues that redacting the Affidavit and unsealing it in part is not a viable option because the necessary redactions ‘would be so extensive as to render the document devoid of content that would meaningfully enhance the public’s understanding of these events beyond the information already now in the public record.'”
Related: Trump to DOJ: Show Us What You Got, Release the Affidavit Behind FBI Raid on Mar-a-Lago
Trust us: for half the country, raiding a former president’s home for the first time in the history of our country, after all we’ve been through, is not devoid of context, nor are we ignorant of “understanding of these events beyond the information already now in the public record.” We’ve seen this act before in the Russiagate and Alfa Bank fake scandals. Also, it’s hard to believe a sentient judge who’s watched the FBI circus over the past six years doesn’t know the FBI leaked fake news to the media about all of the above and then about Trump having nuclear secrets, which was likely recycled into a fearsome and fantastical tale in the warrant affidavit. Just like Russia Collusion.
Former Senate Judiciary counsel Mike Davis told me on my Adult in the Room Podcast that, according to the FBI’s own inventory of items taken from Trump’s secured facility at Mar-a-Lago, there were no nuclear documents there.
“If Trump had these nuclear records,” he said, “which is complete[ly] bogus because there’s not a Q classification on the inventory of records they got back.” So obviously there were no nuclear secrets in Trump’s possession that the FBI took. Davis then went through the codes of how each entity categorizes classified material, and he joked, “so Trump’s going to launch from Mar-a-Lago and tricked Biden’s Secretary of Defense to verify his authorized search because that is how the protocols work … ”
He wondered why, if there was a concern about nuclear secrets in Trump’s possession, it took President Biden 18 months to do something about it. And why, when Attorney General Merrick Garland was told, he waited “weeks” to act, and after Garland got a search warrant, the FBI waited days to serve it.
This brings us to another concern of the Feds about releasing the Trump search affidavit documents: divulging sources, methods, and interview techniques. These documents contain “among other critically important and detailed investigative facts: highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government; specific investigative techniques.” Makes sense. Advertising your tricks on the public stage is embarrassing. Like when Peter Strzok was dispatched by disgraced FBI chief James Comey to see what he could find out about a dead investigation by dropping by for a chat — aka an official interview — with Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn during the hectic transition period. What an ethical zenith for the FBI.
Related: Trump Strikes Back
The public record includes an Inspector General’s scalding report about the DOJ and FBI’s shenanigans. I don’t care how much you hate former President Trump — and the magistrate has indicated he does — how do you sign off on a search warrant from some of the same people who used Hillary Clinton’s fake Trump Russia hoax and lied four times to get spy warrants? Is pattern recognition not part of judge school?
Finally, my favorite part of the judge’s order is his acknowledgment of “the intense public and historical interest in an unprecedented search of a former President’s residence,” as if this were news to him. He also must have known on some level that the public records statutes aren’t criminal so the FBI didn’t have to pull a Waco siege on the former president’s house, and that the president has the freedom to classify, declassify, and hold documents for an extraordinary period, and that since these are not criminal offenses, there can be no felonious charge of obstruction of justice because — all together now — there’s no crime. But that did not stop our intrepid magistrate, no sirree.
Since it’s impossible to miss all of these data points, let’s assume magistrate Bruce Reinhart knows them and just wants us to play along that he’s on the ropes and is struggling with this moral dilemma. He takes seriously the FBI’s “reliable” information and feels impelled to do the right thing based on immense public pressure and ethical cannon to release it all. Feel his pain.
And then remember who he is. He’s the judge who ignored the law, believed a weaponized FBI, and signed a warrant to entangle a politician he publicly dislikes within 90 days of an election.
Don’t forget. And don’t be the dope in this scenario.
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