John Dean throws cold water on Trump lawyers' demand that the full search affidavit be released publicly
The judge in the Mar-a-Lago document search is giving the Justice Department until Thursday to turn over their redactions of the affidavit for the search warrant of the president's club. Analysts are anticipating that the redactions won't deliver much information, particularly if the DOJ can make an argument that the safety of the informants is at stake.
Watergate witness John Dean walked through some of the complexities of the case and the need for the public to understand the reasons for doing the search and the need to protect informants inside Trump's universe. Trump's lawyers have said that the affidavit will either be released in its entirety or they'll redact it because they don't want to tip their hand to the fact that they "don't have anything." Dean had another approach.
"I think it's a unique situation and I think the judge senses that. the outrage that has been apparent since the word of the search," Dean explained. "So, I think the judge is trying to find some ground that he can give the people some understanding of what's going on. That is not going to be the classified information. They're not going to get any of this highly classified information. Nor are they going to get really what the investigation is doing or any of the witnesses who are on the line in this investigation. They're not going to reveal those."
What he does think might be revealed is the back and forth between the Justice Department and the National Archives about trying to get the documents back.
"And the explanations, maybe allusions to the explanations Trump has given, if any, as to why he had those," Dean continued. "I don't think there appear to be any. We haven't heard any, but we certainly know this has been going on for months before they actually exercised the search warrant. And I don't think that the attorney general would have given the authority to go ahead and go to court and get the search warrant had this not been a potentially dire situation. And that's what can happen with highly classified information. So, I think that we're going to see a redacted document, but it's going to give us some insights, not that Trump won't abuse those and play the grievance role, because anything is blacked out."
President Joe Biden was never briefed on the search warrant at Donald Trump's golf club in Palm Beach, but there are reports that the White House has "deep concerns" about what was found and if the former president had top secret information. Even former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told CNN that having the "TS" level of documents is seriously problematic and he wondered how they got there in the first place.
Dean said that Biden probably doesn't need to be briefed on much from the Justice Department about the case unless it's something that is ultimately going to lead to another Jan. 6 attack on Washington.
"I think the White House is smart. This is the way the post-Watergate game is supposed to be played," said Dean, referring to the president not having a heavy hand over the DOJ.
See the video below or at this link.
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