BUCK: Just to bring you up to speed with the latest breaking news, there is a hearing right now going on, court hearing in West Palm Beach — very nice this time of year. A little hot, maybe. Very nice — on whether there will be a special master appointed in the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents case. The short version is the Department of Justice saying it’s all government records so Trump has no standing, it’s not his stuff, we took it back, end of story.
Trump’s saying, hold on a second. Some of this is my stuff. I want it back. Why are you taking it? Appoint a third party that’s supposed to be neutral. A special master is an extension of the authority of the court. And let’s actually see. Now, there are a few ways that this can go. But there are still many out there who seem to be of the belief that a criminal prosecution of Trump could happen.
I think it’s very unlikely. Former CIA director — I think this guy has done more than any other person to really lower the brand — I mean, the CIA is now becoming like the Detroit Lions of the federal agencies, Clay. Very sad, as a former CIA person myself. The former director here, Brennan, is basically without any basis saying, “Yeah, this looks like maybe Trump was trying to sell secrets to a foreign power or something.”
BUCK: Now, I just want to be clear to everybody, this guy is a Russia collusion truther, completely wrong on it, accused Donald Trump of treason for that, is obviously a Hillary and Obama disciple. I mean, he’s somebody who worships at the Democrat altar and has for many, many years. Everything he said is nonsense.
The idea that Trump had interspersed in some documents that, by the way, he says he declassified, among thousands of other documents, these are under lock and key, in Mar-a-Lago, with Secret Service, with surveillance cameras there. The government’s known about it for 18 months. And this is what you do if you’re trying to sell secrets?
The fact that they put people so stupid and so dishonest on television tells you all you have to know about the desperation of Democrats. Clay, I don’t want us to spend too much time on this, but I wanted your reaction to, one, the obvious overreaching; and then also, I’m feeling more and more like they’re not gonna charge him. And you know what? If they are, bringing it, because these psycho libs are gonna have a dose of reality if they think that that’s actually gonna fly.
CLAY: Here is what everybody like your CIA stooge expert there should have to answer. If what Trump did rises to the level of criminality, why was Hillary Clinton not prosecuted for far more documents on a digital server that would have been even more easily hacked and disseminated than the hard, physical companies that Donald Trump was keeping in Mar-a-Lago?
That’s a question that I haven’t heard anybody answer at all. The precedent set by James Comey when he came out and said we’re not going to charge Hillary Clinton, what she did, to me, is far more egregious. She certainly did not have the ability to declassify any of these documents. What we’re really talking about is a dispute between Donald Trump and the National Archives over where documents should be stored.
And as soon as I saw — that’s the essence of this debate. It is, like, somebody has a library book that they have kept out too long and suddenly the full wait of the federal government is being brought to bear on them over where that library book should be, okay? So, the National Archives is saying we should have the right to these documents.
Trump is saying these are my private property, I declassified them, these are my documents, I should be able to keep them. And the only reason this is even a conflict is because of a law that was passed in the 1980s which we’re not even sure how would be applied on a larger scale here as it pertains to the Presidential Records Act and the interplay here between the Archives and Trump.
But here’s what I would say. The moment that that picture was taken by the FBI, of all of these supposed documents which are so dangerous to American interests, yet you have the FBI arraying it on the Mar-a-Lago floor as a staged photo to try to make people think, “Oh, this is how crazy things were inside of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s just got top secret documents scattered everywhere all over the floor,” that, to me, turned this into a clear political distraction move.
And I believe ultimately what will happen next year is we’ll get a similar press conference to what happened with Hillary Clinton with no charges being brought against Donald Trump. But what I don’t want everybody out there to do is…
There are gonna be a lot of little twists and turns of this procedure, as there’s many different legal filings and arguments back and forth, and certainly we know the Department of Justice is trying to string along this story with their allies in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and they want everybody focused on this as opposed to actually focusing on what’s really at issue.
From pistachio Crème Brûlée to Brussels Sprouts, is this man ever happy?
Watch Clay and Buck analyze what's different about this Trump transition.
Eric Hovde speaks out over concerns about his race against Tammy Baldwin.
Clay's loving Trump's cabinet picks so far.
The former New York Times reporter explains his transformation.