On Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat," Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman laid out the key problems with former President Donald Trump's demand that a federal judge appoint a special master to review the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago as part of their probe into mishandled classified information.
"What do you see going on here?" asked anchor Ari Melber.
"Well, I think there is really no need for a special master at this point," said Akerman. "They've already gone through it. They went through it before the judge even issued her initial order this week. They found some documents that may be covered by attorney-client privilege, but they've really completed their task. There's nothing else. Trump's claim of executive privilege really doesn't hold water. All those documents belong to the government. The executive privilege belongs to the current executive, not to Donald Trump."
Akerman continued that he doesn't think this suit — being heard by a Trump-appointed judge sympathetic to the former president's claim — will significantly delay the investigation. "The government knows what these documents are ... they've all been cataloged. They probably have all been fingerprinted at this point, so there really is nothing for a special master to do, even if he were appointed. So the investigation will go forward. There's a grand jury presumably sitting in the District of Columbia that's doing this. It's not in Florida. The only reason it's happening in Florida is, because under the law, the Justice Department is required to get a search warrant in the district in which the search warrant is being executed. So, the investigation itself through the FBI, agents, the grand jury, it's not going to stop. There's no way — if Trump thinks this is some way to stop the clock, or to run the clock, it's not going to happen here, because the investigation will go forward."
Making the problem even worse, noted Akerman, is that the judge would have to make sure the special master has the clearance to review the documents in the first place.
"You have to have someone who has a high classified information category," said Akerman. "It's got to be somebody who's passed a very rigorous standard of being able to look at these documents. So even if the judge were to appoint somebody tomorrow, it's going to take a few days for somebody to be cleared for classified information. I've done this most recently. You spend the whole day just filling out the form. They ask you everything you've ever done in your entire life, and you have to lay it all out accurately or you're in trouble."
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