Former FBI official believes Trump judge could try and get all of the agents thrown off the case
One of the hitches to Donald Trump's attempts to delay any investigation into the stolen documents taken at Mar-a-Lago is that prior to the Aug. 2022 search, he handed over a ton of documents both classified and not to members of the National Archives and to the FBI.
So, Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling over the special master and the injunction only applies to the information seized at Mar-a-Lago by the FBI. All other information gathered and any communications between the Archives and Trump's representatives is fair game for the Justice Department to investigate outside of Cannon.
Speaking to MSNBC on Tuesday, former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi said that one of the ways that Cannon and Trump's lawyer could impact the investigation and make life difficult for the DOJ is by having a score of FBI agents or Justice Department officials removed from the investigation because they've already seen the documents.
The question becomes, as Figliuzzi explained, can't the DOJ move forward and just not use anything they seized?
"So, here's my concern, 25 years with the FBI, on how I know the FBI and DOJ operate with regard to being very reticent about doing anything at this point that's going to screw up a case or incur the wrath of a judge who already isn't really favorably inclined to be objective," he began."By that, I mean, if a judge has said, 'I don't want you using these documents that you seized,' you could play a game. You could say, 'Yeah, okay, great, we're going to continue to do investigations, talk to witnesses and sources, but we're just going to rely on stuff outside of what we seized during the search.' The problem is, the Trump team is going to then say, 'You interviewed that person Tuesday. Prove that that interview was not based on something you seized during the search.'"
The DOJ could make it clear they got the interview through a source, and the Trump team could force them to prove it, requiring the DOJ to have the necessary information based on what was already obtained prior to the search warrant. If they can't provide the info then they can go back to the judge and complain about it and appeal and that piece goes on forever.
What could ultimately cause a hitch, however, is that the DOJ went to a Florida judge to get a Florida search warrant for the stolen documents in Florida. If the Justice Department called a federal grand jury in Washington to deal with the stolen documents that are in possession of the National Archives that Trump already turned over Judge Cannon couldn't put a stop to it.
Figliuzzi went on to say that even if the FBI said that they attempted to constrain the conversation to non-search and seizure material but the person started bringing it up it could cause problems.
There could be questions like, "Did you report that separately in a different document? Did you have a filter agent with you to start recording that? Did you call time-out in the interview? Can you prove that? This is a mess!" he explained. "And it only serves to delay, which seems to be precisely what the Trump team is looking for. Delay, delay, and delay. And I'm really concerned that if we're not careful, you're going to go through the cadre of seasoned counterintelligence agents at the Washington field office pretty darn quickly if everybody becomes tainted."
See his full conversation with MSNBC below or at this link.
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