Seth Abramson

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

34/ By the same token, Trump has not and cannot credibly raise executive privilege as an issue because he is not the president, the actual president (Biden) has waived that privilege preemptively anyway, and privilege actually has nothing to do with the case—which is about theft. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

33/ Well...no, actually. Trump has made no showing whatsoever (or even claim) that the documents seized included attorney-client privileged materials, because of course he’s too busy trying to preserve a false defense that he didn’t even *know* what he stole from DC (yes—really). — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

32/ So, you might wonder, should a judge be willing to spend more *money* on a case than usual because a defendant is famous? No. More *time*? No. These are inappropriate considerations. But what about the other three circumstances I just outlined? What of those? Do *they* apply? — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

31/ They’re also rare because most cases involving seizures do not involve any even potentially privileged materials; judges can in theory engage in what are called in camera reviews of materials *without* a special master; and most defendants would never ask for *or* expect one. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

30/ First, understand that across *all cases* in which documents are seized—at both the state and federal level—special masters are *obscenely* rare. Why? Because they’re expensive (taxpayer money) and time-consuming (they can prolong investigations and even pretrial detentions). — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

29/ So now we come to the critical third question. Seth, you might opine, why are you pretending that special masters aren’t *common* in cases like this? Aren’t you only upset because this case involves Trump? And the answer is: no to every single part of both of those sentences. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

RT @SethAbramson: (🧵) THREAD: This thread explains, from the perspective of a former criminal defense attorney and federal criminal investi… — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

28/ So yes, this case involves national security—and every way in which it does (and every way Cannon has *acknowledged* it involves national security) militates for allowing DOJ to continue its work trying to find stolen data and hold those who steal classified data accountable. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

27/ ...it’d be not at all surprising if the FBI now sought to search Trump Tower and Bedminster precisely *because* their suspect—who, to be clear, they have dead to rights—has managed to forum-shop his way into preventing them from determining if *more* stolen data is out there. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

26/ Instead, Cannon has effectively put a stop on the DOJ investigation for weeks or even months, making it impossible for DOJ to determine if Trump still has national secrets hidden somewhere in one of his domiciles. Indeed, Cannon's ruling so threatens national security that... — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

25/ The DOJ investigation is a national emergency, as DOJ doesn’t know what was taken illegally from DC, whether it has all of it, what was done with what it doesn’t have (or where such portion of Trump’s stolen goods might be)—and so it *needs* to keep reviewing documents *now*. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

24/ And make no mistake, that is *exactly* what Cannon did: she acknowledged the high national security stakes in this case and then said that Trump’s *specially protected, snowflake-like reputational interests* were clearly more important than U.S. national security. Uh....what? — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

23/ This is, of course, a preposterous idea. There are immediate and dire national security implications in the question of whether or not DOJ’s counterintelligence division is going to be allowed to continue its investigation of one of the worst security breaches in our history. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

22/ And Judge Cannon *confirmed* that this case *does* involve national security by permitting the *USIC* review of Trump’s theft of highly classified records to continue unimpeded. So was she saying the *DOJ* probe has no such need to continue, or national security implications? — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

21/ So secondly you might ask, isn’t this case different because it involves national security? Answer: yes! We’ve a long tradition of dealing with cases that implicate national security differently in a host of ways—all of which (natch) are designed to protect national security. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

20/ And to be clear, even if a judge thought DOJ’s new rules involving elections were *wise* and *just*, this wouldn’t be the same thing as institutionalizing them by judicial fiat. (And need we add that every Trump voter *opposed* such DOJ rules when it was Hillary under probe?) — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

19/ So yes, perhaps inadvisedly, DOJ electively—not by judicial fiat—adopted some controversial rules designed to protect voters by protecting *active candidates* from certain actions in the run-up to an election those candidates are running in. This has nothing to do with Trump. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

18/ Even when Barr expanded these rules in a thoroughly corrupt way, it (a) was unilaterally and so recently it’s hardly a clear precedent, and (b) was intended to protect *anyone associated with a current campaign*, rather than an ex-president who is *pointedly* not a candidate. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

17/ And the clear purpose of these rules isn’t to protect politicians; rather, it’s to protect *voters* from unscrupulous *prosecutors* who might seek to unduly influence them with politically motivated prosecutions of *candidates*. It has nothing to do with non-candidate Trump. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

16/ Nor has DOJ given any indication, to anyone, that it intends to violate its own pre-election policies—though frankly it wouldn’t be in investigating Trump, who’s actually *not covered by them* as an ex-president. In fact AG Garland publicly recommitted himself to these rules. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

15/ But even more importantly, Judge Cannon actually held in her ruling that DOJ had not abused its authority—had *not* abused Trump’s constitutional rights—which makes any explanation of her ruling in grounded in the opposite claim wildly self-contradictory and even nonsensical. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

14/ We’ve already seen these rules fail badly *as to Trump*. The OLC opinion that barred DOJ (arguably) from indicting Trump on 12 counts of Obstruction in 2019 led to DOJ feeling it couldn’t prosecute him at *all*—even post-term. So if anything these rules are *too* restrictive. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

13/ First, yes—DOJ has rules about how it handles investigations and cases that may influence elections. We should note that these rules are controversial and were recently made *more* controversial in being expanded by Trump’s creature Barr, but have not been shown to be abused. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

12/ Some may object to the foregoing statement. I address three possible objections here. 1) Isn’t there already evidence DOJ treats pols differently? 2) Isn’t this case different, as it involves national security? 3) Aren’t special masters common and don’t they ensure fairness? — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

11/ But in point of fact, it’s *essential* that both the executive-branch FBI *and* judicial-branch U.S. District Court in Florida communicate to America that a defendant’s profession doesn’t matter—bricklayers, doctors, organ-grinders, and ex-presidents will be treated the same. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

10/ In other words, if Cannon can see that the search of Mar-a-Lago harmed Trump’s ongoing political ambitions at a level of public scrutiny you or I having our homes searched wouldn’t receive, Trump fanatics can say that the FBI could *and did* make exactly the same calculation. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

9/ In being a government agent (judges are government agents, just from a different branch than the FBI) acknowledging the political dimensions to any harm done to Trump’s reputation, Cannon opens the door to the ignorant thinking such considerations are normal...even in the FBI. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

8/ Why do I say that she did worse than just not applying the rule of law equally across all those before her? Because she implicitly accepted Trump’s dime-a-dozen whining about being persecuted—many defendants say/think this—by bringing political considerations into her ruling. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

7/ In ruling (in part; explicitly) on this basis, Cannon not only made up *precisely* the sort of ad hoc judicial-activist new rule Republicans claim to hate—“ex-presidents’ reputations matter more than other people’s, even though they’re just regular citizens”—but did far worse. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

6/ And that problem is this one: Trump appointee Aileen Cannon declared—and not just implicitly, but, horrifyingly, *explicitly*—that Donald Trump’s reputation simply *matters* more than yours or mine, as do his property rights. And they matter more because he is a powerful man. — PolitiTweet.org