The Department of Justice has responded to former President Donald Trump’s call for a special master to go through the items taken from his Mar-a-Lago home in a raid earlier this month. And basically, it’s this: he doesn’t deserve them because we don’t like him.

Of course, it took a 36-page document, including a photo staged by the FBI, to say this, but there it is.

In short, and as I explained in some detail at PJ Media earlier this week, the FBI and attorneys at DOJ contrived a way to insinuate themselves into a documents pissing match between Trump and the National Archives. They accused Trump of obstruction involving disputes over documents under the “espionage act,” which isn’t a criminal statute, and then accused the former president of “obstructing” things that are not crimes.

Here’s how I put it:

The Biden Administration took a National Archives dispute with the last president (which happens with all presidents), elevated it to the White House to blow up the previous president’s privileges (which have been enjoyed by all presidents), parlayed that to a grand jury, and got its subpoena ham sandwich. The Feds then waited until its hand-picked anti-Trump magistrate — not a federal judge — was on the bench and Trump wasn’t home and got the okay for a search warrant for presidential records. Then they dispatched the phalanx of 30 gunned-up FBI raiders, who rifled through the family’s personal items for nine hours to get every document Trump ever touched during his four years in office, trying to find something — anything — on the 45th president. With the documents in their possession, the Feds declined to wait for an actual Article III judge to weigh in on a federal special master to go through the items. They went right ahead and culled through them, lateraled them over to their buddy the DNI, and we now have the intelligence community — which is meant to go after terrorists — playing Monday-morning quarterback on the 45th President of the United States. 

Read the whole thing: ‘6 Ways From Sunday’ Alert: Yet ANOTHER NEW PROBE Into Trump’s Declassified Docs

The DOJ’s filing came late last night because the Creative Writing Department at DOJ, which doesn’t exist, hit a wall. Garbage cans were overflowing, everyone was getting punchy, and nobody wanted to die walking to Starbucks. So they were forced to go to the kitchen and steal the leftover Four Lokos someone still had squirreled away in their cubby. By the time it was over, DOJ lawyers had patched together a narrative, put lots of Nixon references in it, pretended Trump had to assert all presidential document rights or they didn’t count, and hoped the judge wouldn’t notice the president has the power to declassify documents and has a right to retain documents under the Presidential Records Act.

Here’s an English-language version of the DOJ/FBI assertions:

• President Trump put personal things in a box we demanded, so we assume he wasn’t careful enough with all the documents.
• President Trump shouldn’t have a special master cull through the docs because we already did.
• President Trump had things marked “classified” in his house, so we took all the boxes and documents around them.
• Nixon was charged with obstruction so, by the neighborhood rule, Trump can’t have docs, either.
• He didn’t assert privilege over all the documents we took in the raid, so he can’t have them.
• We didn’t tell the president what we took in a raid until today.
• We raided his house because when he handed over documents, he had things we didn’t want him to have, even though he may have declassified them.
• We don’t like Orange Man to be able to declassify docs.
• We believe he “likely” did something wrong.
• We think he moved documents, and moving documents must mean he was obstructing our raid, which hadn’t happened yet.
• He’s a former president but we don’t think he should have these documents.
• We won’t discuss if they’re declassified because that doesn’t help our case. And even if he did declassify them, we don’t acknowledge it.
• When we came to “interview” him about the documents in June, he never said he declassified them or asserted privilege, and we never would have touched them if he had.
• He may still have had more documents we didn’t want him to have and therefore that is obstruction of the non-crime statutes we named in our probable cause documents to get the search warrant.
• Trust us.
• See? This photo shows Trump was messy.

Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton called the photo “dishonest.”

The Biden FBI staged a dishonest photo with purportedly classified material, with the approval of the Biden DOJ, and submitted it to a court to try to make Trump look bad. These agencies are irredeemably corrupt.

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) August 31, 2022

In a TruthSocial post, former President Trump tsk tsk’d the FBI’s handling of his documents.

In another post, Trump asked, Hey, “Whatever happened to NUCLEAR, a word that was leaked early on by the FBI/DOJ to the Fake News Media!”

The founder of the Article III Project, constitutional lawyer Mike Davis, said in a series of tweets that presidents have the authority to possess documents.

He said he believes the raid was a “political hit” to claw back Russia Collusion documents that are “damning” to the same people running it.

The Biden raid on Trump was unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful.

It was a political hit.

Trump had his personal copy of the declassified Crossfire Hurricane / Russian collusion records.

And they are very damning for Obama, Biden, Hillary, Susan Rice, Clapper, FBI, intel.

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 31, 2022

He also pointed out:

Biden DOJ has a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. The President has the power to declassify records and take personal copies when he leaves office. Commander-in-Chief Clause trumps Espionage Act. Presidential Records Act trumps general statutes on government property.

Congress expects former Presidents to have classified and other presidential records. Presidential Records Act doesn’t differentiate between classified and unclassified. They get federally funded staff, security clearances, secure offices (SCIFs), and Secret Service Protection.

The law treats Presidents differently than everyone else. Period. Guess who wasn’t–and never will be–President?

So why wasn’t she charged with espionage, destruction of gov’t property, and obstruction after she destroyed her illegal home server and phones?

Publicly, the Biden Justice Department pretend their unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful home raid on President Trump was to get back classified records and government property. He declassified them. He kept a personal copy. They were guarded by the Secret Service.

Now, the FBI hangs it hat on speculation that Trump documents were “likely removed” as evidence.

Hillary Clinton did much worse and FBI Director James Comey, who had wrested control over the prosecution from the Attorney General, decided that she did nothing prosecutable. See that story nearby.

This is what unequal justice looks like. And it’s the least of our worries at this point.