'Lunacy': Former prosecutor slaps down Trump's latest 'out of bounds' trial demand
Reacting to a report that Donald Trump has asked Judge Aileen Cannon to compel the U.S. government to build him a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) at Mar-a-Lago so that he can review evidence in the classified documents case against him without leaving the confines of his Florida resort, one former U.S. attorney called the demand "lunacy."
Appearing on MSNBC with host Ana Cabrera, legal analyst Joyce Vance scoffed at the former president's request and labeled it a non-starter by pointing out federal judges don't have the power to make Trump's trial-delaying wish come true.
With Trump asking that the documents be returned to the scene of the crime, where the FBI was forced to show up with a warrant to retrieve them, Vance dismissed the twice-impeached president's proposal and called out his reasons for the demand.
"So Trump asking the Justice Department to reestablish a secure facility in Mar-a-Lago so he and his lawyers can safely discuss classified documents; we know he had what they call a SCIF at Mar-a-Lago during his presidency," Carbrera began before prompting, "Joyce, does this seem like a reasonable request? "
"It's not a reasonable request," Vance shot back. "For one thing, this is Trump asking for special treatment that no other defendant would get. No one gets a SCIF built in their home or, in this case, I suppose their hotel, when they're involved in this sort of litigation, for a lot of obvious reasons including cost."
"For Trump this is a particularly disingenuous request because a federal judge does not have the ability to order the intelligence community to locate one of these highly secure facilities in a specific place, and it's easy to understand just the lunacy of the notion that someone who's accused of mishandling documents would be entrusted with a SCIF," she explained.
"It would require 24-hour surveillance to maintain its integrity and, even then, the intelligence community might have very legitimate concerns about doing something like this in this particular location. So this is a request that's out of bounds in all regards."
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