Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the special master that has been appointed by Judge
Eileen Cannon to oversee the documents seized that Donald Trump's house. There's really no
way to put it lightly. Bess Levin has a very good article in Vanity Fair called that Trump's special
master situation is shady as F, according to legal experts. Now, I encourage you to check out the
entire article, because it will go into a lot more detail than I will go into today. But as many of
you who have emailed me have suspected, the legal reasoning for the special master being granted
is extraordinarily shaky. And as many legal experts have weighed in, it will really do nothing
other than slightly delay the process of this criminal investigation into Donald Trump. Now,
that shouldn't be dismissed as nothing. Donald Trump's strategy for many years legally has been
delay. Any opportunity you have to delay is good. And most lawyers will agree that at least as far
as the clients they represent. Right. If you ask them about some case they're not involved in.
Most of them will say, you know, the delay tactics don't typically help over the long term. But
there are lawyers who will say, well, listen, what I know is if I can delay,
I give myself an opportunity to mount a better defense, allow people to quit, retire, get bored,
get frustrated, whatever. So delay is usually considered something that lawyers like to do and
that they can bill for, by the way. So Bess Levin reports. Judge Eileen Cannon granted this request
from Donald Trump's legal team for a special master. A special master reviews the documents
holds and reviews the documents. In this case, it's 11,000 government documents that were seized
from Mar a Lago on August 8th. And the reason that this is advantageous to Trump, at least in theory,
is that while the documents are under the review of the special master, prosecutors can't continue
using those documents and examining the documents for their criminal investigation. The review has
to happen first. Trump's claim is that some of the materials were covered by executive privilege.
Some of the materials are medical documents, etc.. Legal experts, by and large, believe that
the ruling is absurd for a couple of different reasons. First, let's start with Samuel Buell,
who's a Duke University law professor. He spoke to The New York Times and said, quote, To any lawyer
with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad and
the written justification is even flimsier. Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets
in federal court. He's getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce
the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted when he is being privileged. That's a really important
point. Trump's story is I am being treated uniquely, terribly by the justice system. The
reality is he's being treated uniquely well. The fact that the Justice Department and FBI
waited so long to do the search warrant after they requested the documents from Trump under
subpoena and they weren't turned over. That is a privilege that was granted to Donald Trump.
The fact that the special master has been appointed is a privilege for Donald Trump.
Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe wrote about Judge Eileen Cannon's decision. Her
decision was utterly lawless. She is disgraced. She has disgraced her position as an Article
three judge and then U.S. a former U.S. acting solicitor general, Neal Katyal, wrote on Twitter.
This special master opinion is so bad, it's hard to know where to begin. She says Biden hasn't
weighed in on whether documents are protected by executive privilege. Nonsense. The Archives letter
makes it clear the current president thinks none of this is privileged. The archivist says
it is not a close question to the judge and joins the entire investigation because some
of the material might be subject to executive privilege. But executive privilege isn't some
post-presidential privilege that allows presidents to keep documents after they leave office.
At most, it simply means these are executive documents that must be returned to the archives.
It doesn't in any way, shape or form mean they can't be used in a criminal prosecution
about stolen documents. And lastly, this is an important point. Judge Cannon said that the
reputational harm to Trump from the documents justifies a special master. And Katyal says
that's insane. Every criminal defendant has reputational harm. Are we now going to have
special masters in every criminal investigation? And that's a really important point. One of the
big statements made by Judge Eileen Cannon is the reputational harm that Trump would suffer or
might suffer from these. Documents being given to the FBI, potentially made public, etc., justifies
a special master getting all the documents and reviewing them. Arguably, any time you are
raided and potentially indicted by the federal government, you're going to suffer reputationally,
even if the charges are ultimately dropped. This is one of the things that is sort of a.
I don't know what to call it a calling card. It's it's a feature
or a bug, whatever, of our justice system, which is sometimes people are arrested and charged
and then they are found not guilty or charges are dismissed. And there is
still the risk of and sometimes there really is reputational harm if you're accused of murder
and charged with murder, and then there's a lengthy trial and you're acquitted. It's not
like everything goes back to zero because you were found not guilty. And you can argue that
that's a problem with our justice system. It's a problem arguably with many justice systems,
which is you can be charged and there can be a trial and then you're acquitted. But the fact
that you were charged still hurts you in some way. Reputationally, it's not unique to Donald Trump.
And the idea, as Neal Katyal points out, arguably, any time this happens to any defendant, there's
reputational harm. You're not going to grant. A special master in all cases is another one of the
signs that Donald Trump isn't being persecuted unfairly, he's actually being privileged,
he is being deferred to and given things that so many others, so many other defendants are not