Judge Orders Parts of Mar-a-Lago Affidavit to be Unsealed

CLAY: The judge has already issued a ruling, and I am reading directly from some of that ruling. And the headline — this is from NBC News right now — the judge has ordered portions at least of the Mar-a-Lago search affidavit to be unsealed. This is a big deal. Here’s quotes from his decision, Buck. “On my initial careful review, there are portions of it that can be unsealed.” This is magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart. He is the judge who allowed this warrant to be issued which allowed the raid to take place at Mar-a-Lago. The top government lawyers had argued that this could not be released in any way because it would jeopardize the investigation. The judge said he would, quote, “Give the government a full and fair opportunity to make redactions,” ordered those redactions to be returned to him by next Thursday. He said he would review their request and then either order its release if he agrees with the redaction or hold a closed-door hearing with the government if he disagrees with the moves that he is making. That is the big decision here that has just come down.

BUCK: So I know how this is gonna go. Anyone want to skip to the end of this? Here’s what’s gonna happen, having looked at lots and lots and lots of classified, in my years at the agency, and then also the redactions process. Judges tend to be very deferential to the government when it comes to what is considered secret and sensitive and classified. So here’s how this will play out.

They’ll release this affidavit and there will be some generalizations in there, “super-secret important stuff needed to be found at Mar-a-Lago,” and then it will be blacked out, blacked out, blacked out, and then “more super-secret information we were looking for regarding,” blacked out, blacked out, and here’s what they’re gonna say. Oh, look, the Democrats will claim that this justifies the search, that this was all done on the up and up. And people on the right are going to say, “I don’t trust that they’re actually redacting things that would really hurt national security if it was known.” Remember, it’s not the actual documents. It’s what kind of documents, basically, they’re looking for. That’s what the expectation is here. I also want to know, is there anything relating to January 6th that would be in this affidavit? So, Clay, the plot thickens, but this also extends. This keeps going. This is not going to solve it even when they release it.

CLAY: Yeah. And here’s what I would say, Buck, that is maybe a little bit of an interesting angle here that isn’t being talked about a great deal. All of the news media is actually on Trump’s side here wanting this affidavit to be released. So New York Times, NBC, CBS, the Washington Post, all of these places that ordinarily would be lined up against Trump.

BUCK: But this is for their business model, right? It’s a huge story.

CLAY: Correct. But that is kind of an intriguing angle here. And I will just say this. This magistrate judge has come under a lot of heat. The best way for him to relinquish the heat himself personally is by publishing the affidavit.

BUCK: The former Epstein defense attorney, now judge guy, is coming under heat?

CLAY: Now all of a sudden judges being under heat is unacceptable. We talked about this earlier in the show. The AP came out with a story saying, “Oh, right wing activists are targeting justices with rulings that they don’t like.” And a lot of people out there were saying, “Yeah. You mean like when a left-wing activist do assassinate Brett Kavanaugh?”

BUCK: It’s not even just the assassination attempt, obviously, that’s something worth reminding everybody of.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It’s that essentially the entire Democrat Party was supportive of the explicitly illegal intimidation protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices in the run-up to the Dobbs decision after a leak. By the way, how is that Supreme Court leak investigation going, everybody? What a shock. You mean that they’re not just getting right down to about to have it right away? They don’t want to out one of Sotomayor’s clerks? ‘Cause I think we all believe that’s probably who was engaged in it. We don’t know for a fact, but likely.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: One of the liberal judges. You could pick one if you like. Point is, they have a very different feeling about judges when they don’t like them. And this is something you have to remember about Democrats. The central principle is they have no principles.

CLAY: Alan Dershowitz, timing on having him on the first hour of this — if you did not — if you’re just getting in your car right now and you for some reason missed our conversation with Alan Dershowitz, you need to go listen to that on the podcast. You need to go check out ClayandBuck.com. You can go read the transcript yourself if you don’t have time to listen to it. Buck, Alan Dershowitz has been one of the few attorneys that has stood on principle throughout the Trump era. And he’s no fan of Trump individually.

BUCK: Voted against him twice.

CLAY: Yeah. He hoped to get to vote against him again. But the principles that he is standing in favor of, i.e., the constitutional republic upon which our country is based, his prediction that Merrick Garland is going to come out and issue a James Comey-like statement where he castigates Trump for his behavior as it pertains to these documents but it says they’re not evidence, like James Comey did for Hillary Clinton, if that happens, left wingers in this country are going to lose their mind, because he is the new Robert Mueller.

Now Merrick Garland is their savior. He’s gonna hold Trump accountable. Use the analogy of Lucy and the football. If he comes out and eventually says, “Hey, Trump behaved in a way that I wouldn’t advocate for but it’s not a crime,” they’re gonna lose their minds. My concern is after the warrants were granted and the raid, I’m worried that he’s not gonna have the spine to be willing to do that.

BUCK: Well, you also have to look at the reality here is the Democrats continue along this trend of wanting to imprison their political opponents.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This has become normalized for years. This isn’t just a Mar-a-Lago raid. This goes back to Russia collusion. Because of their Trump Derangement Syndrome and their obsession with the massive lie that Donald Trump worked with Vladimir Putin to steal — which, when you say it out loud now, doesn’t it sound like something a crazy person would say?

CLAY: Yes, it does.

BUCK: Worked with the Kremlin to steal and election? How exactly? How is that going to work? Oh, with some Facebook ads that said mean things about Hillary? Guess what. There were a lot of those out there already. But what you see here is that they don’t care about any of the constitutional principles involved. They just want to lock up their political opponents. Maybe if they had better arguments, maybe if they had better ideas for how to improve life for people in this country, for how to make this a more prosperous and law-abiding country, they would feel like they wouldn’t have to keep trying to throw people in prison. Wasn’t it Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB for a while, said, “You show me the man, I’ll show you the crime”? That’s what they’re doing with Republican after Republican. I’ve gone down the list before.