“The opinion was wrong…It’s deeply flawed.” — William Barr, Sept. 6, 2022
By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Former Attorney General William Barr stated the above regarding U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s recent decision to appoint a “special master” to screen the multitude of top-secret documents found at former President Trump’s residence at Mar-A Lago. It is no accident that Trump’s attorneys sought out a Trump-appointed judge, someone who decided to appoint a special master without ever having seen the confidential documents in question herself.
As attorney general, Barr was one of Trump’s most loyal servants. Remember, this is the same guy that wrote a long memo to the Department of Justice about Special Counsel Robert Mueller III, pushing that he restrict his investigation into then President Trump’s obstruction of justice , calling it “grossly irresponsible.” (Barr is also the gentleman who chose not to immediately release Mueller’s report, instead writing and releasing an inaccurate summary of Mueller’s words, clearly whitewashing Trump’s misdeeds.)
But even Trump loyalist Barr has had it with the former president’s more recent attacks on our democracy, like Trump continuing to push the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, and his well-placed defenders like Judge Cannon. The same criticisms of Cannon’s decision have been stated by numerous legal scholars. It appears to the layman that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision is a uniquely political one, giving Trump more rights than any other American.
Cannon’s rationale is strained, apparently agreeing with Trump attorneys’ unproven assertion that the “DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation.” She stated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation could cause Trump “unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public.”
Apparently, Judge Cannon is not very concerned with the fact that Trump took these documents from the Federal Government and that they contain top-secret materials such as a “foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.”
There were many boxes of material removed (stolen?) from Washington by Trump. These boxes included folders that were clearly marked not just as confidential, but rather as top secret. They contained information on highly sensitive human intelligence sources, as well as intelligence gleaned from hacked foreign correspondence and satellite intel.
Richard Painter worked for the George W. Bush administration where he was the chief ethics officer. In a CNN interview (Sept. 7, 2022), he stated that based on clear violations of the Espionage Act and the severity of the security breaches- “Donald Trump ought to be taken into custody” and that anyone else would already have been in custody.
There was no reason for Trump to remove these items from Washington and bring them into an unsecure resort in Florida where he has his private residence. Numerous folders were marked “top secret” … but were found to be empty. Did Trump himself empty the contents, and if so, why?
Who did Trump give them to and were the recipients domestic or foreign? Trump has been amazingly friendly to foreign dictators like Putin. Is he the new Manchurian candidate?
Is there any question that if someone else took these documents about nuclear secrets from the White House, that they would not be immediately jailed?
Follow Us