Trump’s next-to-last attorney general, Bill Barr, makes a surprisingly clear, objective observation on the law surrounding the FBI’s retrieval of government documents from Donald Trump’s Lipitor testing facility and wedding venue Mar-a-Lago and the decision of a Trump-appointed judge to appoint a special master to review the cache of documents Trump absconded with from the White House.

The opinion, I think, was wrong and I think the government should appeal it.  Uh, uh, uh, it, it’s deeply flawed in a number of ways.  I don’t think the appointment of a special master is gonna hold up, but even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the trajectory.  In other words, I don’t think it changes the ball game so much as we’ll have a rain delay for a couple of innings, but I think the fundamental dynamics are set, which is the government has very strong evidence of what it really needs to determine whether the charges are appropriate, which is government dox, documents were taken.  Classified information was taken and not handled appropriately and, uh, they are looking into, and there’s some evidence to suggest that they were deceived and, and none of that really relates to the content of documents.

It relates to the fact that there were documents there and the fact that they were classified and the fact that they were subpoenaed and never delivered.  But they don’t have to show the content, y’know the specific advice given in a memo, for example, in order to prevail in this case, so I think, ahhh, it’s not really gonna change the decision.