Quote (Goomshill @ Sep 6 2022 12:55am)
That case was exceptional and so was this one. Special masters are very rare- a tiny fraction of a percent of cases- and PV successfully argued against the FBI to have one appointed in their case. Of course, the vast majority of cases don't bring special masters into play because investigators don't normally overreach and seize privileged communications in the first place. And it seems like most case where they do, involved obvious political motivation. The FBI in this case decided to trample over the cooperation between the FPOTUS's counsel and the FBI in turning over documents, then refused to allow counsel to have any say in the privilege review process, then tried to deny the court any review of the documents- all while conspicuously leaking details of the raid to the media and sharing gratuitous photos. Not exactly the work of a neutral and unbiased investigatory agency conducting itself professionally. More like a return to form, of the Comey/McCabe days.
Nah, the ones that trampled over the cooperation was Trump and his council, when they refused to turn over documents and actively lied about returning documents.
Special masters might be rare, because controversial cases are fairly rare. Most of them aren't public issues. All that's required for the special master request to be granted, as outlined in the order, is if they are necessary to maintain the appearance of legitimacy even if the FBI was legitimate in all of their actions. Most FBI actions don't get press coverage so there's no need.
So again, did PV prevail in any way in getting the raid on them declared illegal? Because the raid against Trump was not only legal, it was obviously so and it is clear they took extreme measures that wouldn't have been afforded to anybody else purely to maintain the convenience of Donald Trump. The ONLY thing Trump might succeed on is getting a few non-classified non-important documents declared as attorney client privilege. The bulk will obviously go back to the federal government.
This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Sep 6 2022 12:29am