One of President Trump's attorneys handling the FBI Mar-a-Lago raid case told Fox News the Justice Department appears to be suddenly "efficient" at processing cases, after they claimed to have already filtered the documents they procured when the former president called for a "special master" to sort them out.
James Trusty, who previously served in the DOJ and as a federal prosecutor in Greenbelt, Maryland, said every step of this case requires judicial intervention given the irresponsible and questionable way the feds have executed it.
When the Justice Department announced its "filter team" had already self-identified which documents from the raid fall under attorney-client privilege, Trusty said he placed little value in their definitions therein.
"They're incredibly efficient sometimes, it's odd. And look, they obviously moved very fast on this. They had an opportunity to use the unilaterally-imposed filter team. We didn't have a voice on how they set up a filter team. And now they are trying to suggest with this pleading like, judge, don't be surprised that we've already taken care of all this. Nothing to see here. Well, we're not in a position where we can really have a lot of faith in that," he said.
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After Judge Bruce Reinhart signed off on the raid, Trump petitioned the court for a special master to be installed – the litigation for which has fallen to another South Florida jurist, Judge Aileen Cannon.
"We still need judicial intervention. We need a judge to monitor our access to these documents. We haven't had a single phone call from the filter team telling us anything. This is the first knowledge we had about their findings on attorney-client privilege," Trusty said.
He added that the Biden Justice Department has decided to "ignore the concept of executive privilege" in the case, as well as the Presidential Records Act.
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With that being alleged, he said it is difficult for the DOJ to be seen as some sort of neutral arbiter.
"It's a very politicized place, I'm sad to say. And there's still a need for a judge to get involved on on every aspect of this, checking their assertions of privilege, but also giving us fair, timely access, letting us build a case for why this search warrant was not only essentially morally wrong, but legally wrong," he said.
Trusty, who is representing Trump along with attorneys Christina Bobb, Alina Habba and Lindsay Halligan, said Attorney General Merrick Garland has shown a track record of disinterest in longstanding legal tenets.
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"I've seen an awful lot of behavior by this attorney general that's concerning to me. He has no belief in federalism. He's doubling up on civil rights cases left and right for the chasing of the headline," he said, appearing to reference how Garland is taking up cases against states like Idaho that seek to impose abortion restrictions following the Supreme Court's decision to relegate such regulations back to the states.
"He's targeting parents who have the temerity to challenge CRT in Virginia. And this is kind of par for the course. It's a very politicized Department of Justice, I'm sorry to say. I've been around itmy entire professional life. I don't take any pleasure saying these things, but somehow someone needs to stand up and do the right thing," Trusty added.
He also dismissed criticism from the New York Times and other liberal outlets, who have cast aspersions on the collective quality of Trump's legal team.
Trusty said he was once praised for prosecuting "no-body" murder cases and RICO violations, but suddenly is now derided because of who his current client is.
