Trump's legal team hoping affidavit is heavily redacted to save them 'embarrassment': former prosecutor
Appearing on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show" early Saturday morning, former federal prosecutor Shanlon Wu suggested that Donald Trump's lawyers are mostly blasé about a federal judge releasing the affidavit used to search the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort and hoping for an assist from DOJ lawyers.
Earlier this week Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ruled, "On my initial careful review ... there are portions of it that can be unsealed,” and told Department of Justice attorneys, he would “give the government a full and fair opportunity” to make redactions to the document with a Thursday deadline.
Asked by host Phang why Trump's lawyers are just sitting back and not protesting, Wu suggested that it may not be as damaging as critics of the president hope -- mainly due to the redactions.
He also claimed Trump's legal team is likley pinning their hopes that enough will be redacted to save them from embarrassment.
"Why is Trump's legal team continuing to hold off taking a position on the affidavit in court?" host Phang asked.
"I think probably, the reality is they're afraid of how embarrassing that release could be and they are confident that likely it is not going to be fully unsealed," he replied. "By the time those redactions are made, it will basically look like one giant solid black box at that point."
"So I think they want to do the posturing that they want it released but, in fact, they don't and then they can point at all the redactions and say this is what they are trying to hide," he added. "I suspect this is what the real strategy is."
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