emptywheel: Trump's Timid (Non-Legal) Complaints about Attorney-Client Privilege

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/08/14/trump-claims-the-ssa-receipt-includes-privileged-materials/

*snip*

I believe there must be some truth to this because if Trump were making completely unsubstantiated claims, he would have made it more generally, claiming that all the boxes must include attorney-client privileged material. Furthermore, Trump’s claims to have watched the search via CCTV notwithstanding, it is highly unlikely Trump has CCTV coverage of his own office, bedroom, and a random storage closet such that he would know what’s in box A-14 (and so on the SSA receipt) versus what’s in box A-15 (which was on the CLASS receipt). Someone who knows the outcome of the search told Trump that one set, but not the other, has materials that are attorney-client privileged. That has to come from the government.

That doesn’t mean my larger hypothesis — that one receipt covered violations of the Espionage Act and the other covered obstruction — has been vindicated. On the contrary, DOJ may simply have chosen to put all records that include an attorney-client claim on a separate receipt so that, if Trump obtains a competent lawyer and demands the Special Master review he’s making a half-hearted request for now, DOJ can move forward with all the other evidence without a 9-month delay like the Special Master review of Rudy Giuliani’s phones necessitated. It would be a clever way of dealing with a very sensitive legal issue.

But I don’t think it’s as simple as that either. Bizarrely, Trump knows something about those boxes such that he’s trying to claim Executive Privilege, in addition to attorney-client privilege.

It’s a nonsense claim, legally. Probably every single box seized last Monday has materials covered by Executive Privilege in them, because every single box would include communications directly with Trump. But there is absolutely no basis for any EP claim for a single thing seized from Mar-a-Lago because the Presidential Records Act underlying the seizure is designed, specifically and especially, to make sure all the EP materials are preserved for history. It’s one of the reasons his refusal to turn over the materials that the Archives were asking for specifically is so insanely stupid, because it gave FBI no choice but to come seize this stuff. Trump’s not making an EP claim to try to delay DOJ’s access to the 27 items, which are mostly boxes, on the CLASS receipt. So he must have learned something about the materials itemized in the SSA receipt to which, in a frantic and transparently silly effort, he’s trying to delay DOJ’s access.

Trump’s announcement that the material on the SSA receipt seems to rule out another possible explanation for the SSA receipt I had been pondering, that it covered the materials that were particularly sensitive from a national security perspective, such as the information on nuclear weapons.

*snip*

[Chainfire]

1. So, they planted it and then took it?

[ultralite001]

2. Couldn't help but notice...

On both property receipts, the Case ID was redacted...

WF-xxxx...

Were documents collected, and listed as described, for two separate cases???