Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: The senior federal judge tasked with reviewing the materials seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate sharply questioned the former president’s attorneys Tuesday during their first hearing in his courtroom. Judge Raymond Dearie repeatedly challenged Trump’s lawyers for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence. “My view of it is: you can’t have your cake and eat it,” said Dearie, the “special…

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The Guardian reports: The document is so dowdy and formal it resembles the annual minutes of a society of tax accountants. Its index lists sections on “objectives” and “rules of engagement” and carries an “addendum” that provides recommendations for hotels and parking. On the cover, two words give a clue to the notoriety of the group that produced it: “MAGA” and “WARNING”. That and the date: 5 January 2021, the day before the US Capitol attack. What goes unsaid on…

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The Daily Beast reports: In the final days of his presidency, Donald Trump quietly attempted what might have been his most brazen play yet to reshape the federal government in his image: He issued an executive order giving him the power to fire essentially any civil servant at will. That attempt was thwarted by the election of Joe Biden. But in laying out a 2024 presidential bid and a White House comeback, Trump has vowed to enact that order again…

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The New York Times reports: An emotional Attorney General Merrick B. Garland addressed new citizens on Saturday at Ellis Island, the site of his family’s American origin story, and warned that the country had become dangerously divided by political factionalism, which has imperiled the democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Garland was presiding over the oath of allegiance for 250 naturalized citizens at the iconic immigration processing center, on the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution in 1787….

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Politico reports: The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to lift a judge’s order blocking criminal investigators from accessing about 100 documents with national security classification markings recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound last month. In a filing with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta Friday night, prosecutors said the government is facing irreparable harm as a result of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling putting the potentially classified records off-limits to the…

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Harry Litman writes: Thursday’s 10-page opinion by U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon denying the government’s motion for a stay in the Mar-a-Lago documents case is being savaged by commentators in terms normally reserved for grotesque transgressions of justice like the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. Respected and generally sober legal analysts have called it an atrocity, “legally and practically incoherent,” “dangerous garbage,” and declared Cannon “a partisan hack.” “No honest and competent legal analyst could have ruled as…

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The New York Times reports: To understand the pressures, feuds and questions about competence within former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team as he faces potential prosecution on multiple fronts, consider the experience of Eric Herschmann, a former Trump White House lawyer who has been summoned to testify to a federal grand jury. For weeks this summer, Mr. Herschmann tried to get specific guidance from Mr. Trump’s current lawyers on how to handle questions from prosecutors that raise issues of…

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Politico reports: U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected a Justice Department demand to let federal prosecutors continue their review of records marked classified that were recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. In her ruling, Cannon refused to accept department officials’ contention that the records they are trying to review as part of an ongoing criminal investigation remain highly classified or contain extraordinarily sensitive defense information that could damage national security if released. “The Court does…

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Insider reports: A lawyer for former President Donald Trump falsely told the National Archives that 12 boxes containing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago only contained “news clippings,” The Washington Post reported Friday. In a September 2021 call, Pat Philbin, a lawyer for Trump and former White House deputy counsel, told the federal agency that no classified documents were contained in the boxes. According to The Post, citing “sources familiar with the conversations,” Philbin based that assertion on representations made to him…

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Politico reports: Justice Elena Kagan warned again on Wednesday that unsound reasoning and politically convenient conclusions have infected the Supreme Court’s recent opinions and are doing damage to the court’s standing with the American public. “When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, when people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem — and that’s when…

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The Daily Beast reports:In confidential court documents, former President Donald Trump tried to squirm his way out of taking a trip to the New York Attorney General’s office last month, telling a judge that the Secret Service had security concerns about the AG’s office, according to two sources familiar with the matter. In the days before his Aug. 10 deposition, according to those two sources and a third person familiar with the discussions, Trump’s legal team asked that the contentious…

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The New York Times reports: The Justice Department has issued about 40 subpoenas over the past week seeking information about the actions of former President Donald J. Trump and his associates related to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to people familiar with the situation. Two top Trump advisers, Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman, had their phones seized as evidence, those people said. The department’s actions represent a substantial escalation of a slow-simmer…

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Politico reports: Donald Trump urged a federal judge Monday to keep in place her order that blocked the Justice Department from continuing its criminal investigation into the highly sensitive government records stashed in the basement of his Mar-a-Lago estate. The filing, a response to prosecutors’ warning that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s unorthodox directive— preventing FBI investigators from accessing the files seized in their Aug. 8 search — was harming national security, urges the Trump-appointed judge to stay the course….

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Luke Mogelson writes: In early August, after agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, allies of the former President were quick to villainize the F.B.I. Although the raid had recovered more than a hundred classified documents, at least eighteen of which were labelled “Top Secret,” Republican pundits and politicians questioned its legitimacy and denounced the federal agency as a “gang of dangerous criminals,” “wolves,” the “Gestapo,” “the K.G.B.,” and “the enemy within.”…

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