good evening. tonight the justice department s message to the supreme court, stay out of mar-a-lago documents case. ever since the fbi got a warrant and conducted a court-approved search, finding boxes of documents, including highly classified ones that did not belong to him, the former president has been trying to slow or stop the wheels of justice from turning. which is his right, each about if it means taking it all the way to the supreme court, which he has. today was the deadline for the department of justice to make its case to the supreme court. we ll have details on their filing in a moment. but first, the former president has now also been making new false statements about other former presidents keeping classified documents. he previously claimed former president obama kept millions of documents for himself. now it s obama and bill clinton and george h.w. bush. george h.w. bush took millions and millions of document. to form a bowling alley feesed together what wa
ought to very closely and very carefully manage who has access to them. judge, how unusual it is that the justice department went out of its way to criticize judge cannan. saying she fundamentally erred in appointing the special master in the first place. they echoed the 11th circuit, saying she abused her discretion. is it unusual for a judge to be criticized by the department of justice? yeah. no. that s not particularly unusual. they wanted to go back to first premises, what i said a moment ago. this entire proceeding is giving trump rights and rounds in this proceeding that he never should have had to begin with. and that s the point that they are really making. she went out of her way to allow a punitive defendant, someone not even indicted yet to intervene or have the court intervene in this in a way he never would. this is really a house of cards. and we get wrapped up in the latest filing as if it is legitimate. but it really is a house of
yes, of course that s accurate. i think what i find in reading this and boiling down to what trump is actually appealing, which is not even the entirety of the 11th circuit s order, basically, what donald trump and his lawyers want is the opportunity to look at the department of justice s evidence, and look at the classified information that they seized from mar-a-lago in part so that they can prepare their defense and so that they may be able to stymie the criminal investigation before it actually results in an indictment. they re not arguing that the department of justice should not be able to examine the classified information. judge cannon ruled that initially. the 11th circuit swiftly rejected that argument, and trump is not even appealing that. all he wants is for the special master and his own attorneys to be able to look at these documents.
was he expecting to do with these documents? if he wants to negotiate with the archives related to these documents, why did he go to such great lengths to conceal them from the department of justice? and if he is such a negotiator, what was he going to do with them? how was he going to use them? and i continue to just be highly, highly concerned about what he would do and what he potentially did do with these documents. judge gertner, what did you make of that new york times reporting? well, i mean, it shows i mean, he was using these documents transactionally, right? he was going to make a deal with it. but it also shows how intentional the keeping of the documents were. at the very beginning, if i don t you recall, there was the feeling this was swept up in a chaotic leave-taking from the white house. but that s obviously not the case. he knew what he had. he knew them to be classified. and the fundamental ingredients
had blocked. first saying the 11th circuit had full authority to block since they re sensitive to national security and the government would be harmed if they were distributed. and their second point is on the flip side, they say trump hasn t been harmed at all by the court blocking these records. so there is really no basis for the supreme court to step in at this point. that s the justice department s view. they want the supreme court to stay out of what has been this ongoing saga over these records. i also the doj was critical of judge cannon who has repeatedly sided with the trump legal team in the proceedings. very critical throughout this 34-page filing. and they really blasted her. just aileen cannon. they blasted her for even appointing the special master in the first place and her decision to grant the special master full access to the documents before the 11th circuit stepped in. they repeatedly cited the 11th circuit s decision where the 11th circuit even criticized