Jonathan Turley Details Garland Affidavit Expectations

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Merrick Garland will censor the document he used to get a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago until there’s nothing left but the word “affidavit.” George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley looked into his crystal ball and predicts that the DOJ is about to break out a fresh case of industrial strength black magic markers. It seems they have a “perverse” incentive to “over-redact.”

Affidavit fight only starting

Jonathan Turley wants to see if Judge Bruce Reinhart is “willing to go mano a mano with the DOJ.” He’s not expecting it. The law professor filled in Hannity viewers on the basic analysis after the Magistrate Judge said on August 18 that he “would release at least a portion” of the affidavit.

It seems to the legal analyst that Reinhart shouldn’t be making that decision because he apparently has a conflict. In any case, he happened to surprisingly make the right one.

I’m a little surprised that he felt that he should be the one to sign off on the warrant and review the affidavit. As for sending it back to the DOJ, I think that was an appropriate order.

Turley and his associates were betting that “he would just defer to the Department of Justice. A lot of judges do that, even though the Department of Justice has a long record of using these arguments to prevent disclosures even to criminal defendants.

What matters more than the judge’s decision, at this point, is what the DOJ does to the affidavit. They get to pick the parts which they think need to be kept away from the public.

The problem is that the Department of Justice is rather notorious for using redactions, and they have sort of a perverse incentive here. If they over redact, it’s more likely the judge will disagree, which means that they can go on appeal and delay any release further.” Like, until after November.

A rather odd incentive

The way Turley sees the situation, “they have a rather odd incentive that the more they redact, the more likely they can get more time. But we will have to see if this judge is willing to go mano a mano with the Department of Justice and say, look, this is excessive.

Turley would if he was sitting there. “I’ve said all along that I believe portions of this affidavit could be released without undermining the investigation.” Not because he got a squint at this one in particular but he’s seen enough of them to know what they look like.

Much of an affidavit involves material that will not necessarily compromise an investigation. And one of the things we’re most interested in is the information that’s already known to the Trump team.” That’s the stuff Merrick Garland wants hidden because team Trump can discredit it if they lied to the judge in the paperwork. There was back and forth between the lawyers and prosecutors from June up until the raid.

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What did they tell the court happened in those communications? Did they faithfully report that there was cooperation, according to the Trump team, and that all other avenues had been exhausted? That’s the type of information you should be able to give.

Garland already told the public that it’s impossible to redact that affidavit without it leaving nothing left to look at. That means a protracted fight to turn it all loose.

As Donald Trump struggles to fight for his political future, with a 2024 run on the horizon, Hunter Biden walks barefoot on the beach, frolicking with his family. He doesn’t have a care in the world. The FBI won’t be raiding his home because he’s a Democrat and therefore well above the law. Even if some miracle happens and he does get charged with something criminal, you can expect a quick plea deal before anything blows back on the Big Guy.

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