But Trump is not done with the time-honored strategy of delaying, distorting and trying to tie the legal system up in knots, which has throughout his life in business and politics often succeeded in postponing or preventing accountability.
In a head-spinning pivot, Trump’s legal team effectively argued that no one should be shocked he had classified documents at his home — he was once president, after all.
“Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm,” the filing said.
Trump’s approach immediately gives his supporters in the GOP and on conservative media new material to muddy the waters, distort the case against him and accuse the DOJ and the FBI of political motives.
But he did not address the core questions swirling around him in the documents case. These include: why did a former president need material, some bearing the highest designations of classification in the intelligence community? And why did he keep material that could potentially damage national security and endanger US agents overseas in insecure locations in his heavily visited resort?
Still Trump’s Wednesday filing, in support of his call for the appointment of an independent official known as a special master to work out whether the FBI took legally privileged documents from his home, could still work for him in the short term. If a judge agrees with his expansive definition of the role, Trump could throw a stick in the spokes of the investigation. He might be able to launch court challenges rooted in legal and executive privilege claims that could be frivolous but would take time to work through the system. And he could challenge the Presidential Records Act through various and exhaustive levels of the legal system. A hearing on Trump’s request is set for 1 p.m. ET Thursday.
If he can push the investigation deep into 2023 and possibly beyond, it could conflict with the presidential campaign and help Trump portray the episode as a politicized effort by the Biden administration to thwart his return to the White House. And he could once more frustrate political opponents desperate to see him quickly pay a price for his refusal to observe presidential norms and constant challenges to the rule of law.
This is one reason why the DOJ urged the judge to equip any special master she appoints with exceedingly limited guidelines for operation.
In itself, a special master is not an unreasonable request in such a case, according to legal experts, though the curiosity here is that Trump waited until the government had documents it took from Mar-a-Lago for two weeks to make it.
“If the…
Read More: Analysis: Donald Trump’s legal gambits offer fresh revelations and deepen his political risk