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Rare is the case that a Trump emissary is an addendum to, and not the focus of, a high-profile proceeding. And Bobbs decision to observe rather than partake ended up earning her a grilling from typically friendly Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who wondered whether she had forfeited Trumps right to help shape the process behind the potential release of the FBIs affidavit.

We really just chose to see how it would play out, Bobb replied.

The moment underscored an increasingly apparent truth about Donald Trumps legal strategy in the week since the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home: He and his team havent settled on a singular approach and appear in the dark about what may come next. Trump has often used litigation to delay but has been loath to go on offense, particularly when hes likely to lose. His vow Friday to make a major motion appeared in keeping with that approach.

While its unclear whether the former president or any of his top allies are at imminent risk of criminal charges, they have sketched out competing and sometimes conflicting positions that may come into play as the investigation now in its early stages accelerates.

Heres a look at the Trump teams early, shifting strategies and how they may fare:

Bobbs quiet approach to Thursdays hearing in Florida differed conspicuously from the tack taken by Trump, who has loudly insisted that DOJ release the unredacted affidavit underlying the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago. Several media organizations and conservative Judicial Watch filed motions with a federal magistrate judge to do just that.

But Trump never authorized his legal team to make that formal request.

His demand for the release of the affidavit was itself a shift. He and his team initially resisted public release of the search warrant itself, which they had access to on Aug. 8. Only after Attorney General Merrick Garland took the unusual step of moving to release the warrant did Trump start calling for transparency.

The public clamor that avoids an actual legal battle suggests Trump is treading cautiously lest his legal team commit to a course of action he cant take back later.

When Trump got his publicly stated wish to release the search warrant, Americans learned about dozens of boxes containing classified material he had squirreled away at his estate, and that DOJ was probing potential felonies, including mishandling of classified material and obstruction of justice.

Trumps team, via media ally John Solomon one of the former presidents authorized representatives to the National Archives floated a new defense on Thursday: Trump told people he considered the materials he stashed at his house to be personal items that belonged to him.

Its unclear whether and how Trump actually made such a designation, and his team has yet to produce evidence of it. But its not a trivial issue. A mishmash of past court rulings have suggested presidents wield enormous sway over their own materials, including the ability to designate some as personal, which removes them from the strict requirements of the Presidential Records Act.

Though the laws governing these designations have made clear that documents deemed personal should also have no inherent value to the operations of government, theres no mechanism to question a presidents decision on this score unless the Archives chooses to challenge it.

Police stand outside an entrance to former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, Aug. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla.|Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo

But theres one problem for Trump in this defense: The power to deem records personal ended the moment his presidency did. So, if he hadnt designated the records taken to Mar-a-Lago by that point, then the determination was no longer his to make.

Given that several of Trumps allies and aides have suggested he didnt know what was packed in the boxes that were shipped to his estate, it would be hard to argue he had designated them as personal items.

Since the FBI went into Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his attorneys have argued that the search warrant itself was deficient overly broad and approved by a biased magistrate judge.

Their evidence of Judge Bruce Reinharts bias? He donated to Barack Obama. Some Trump supporters have pointed as well to his work more than a decade ago for employees and associates of Jeffrey Epstein. But its unclear how that creates a conflict with issues related to Trump. And Reinhart also gave contributions to Jeb Bush.

Trumps team has also suggested that Reinharts recusal from a sprawling lawsuit by Trump against Hillary Clinton and dozens of current and former DOJ officials is proof of bias. But Reinhart, one of six magistrates to recuse from that case, never indicated the reason for his decision. In fact, its far likelier that he recused for a more mundane reason: a prior working relationship with one of the dozens of defendants in the case or their attorneys.

But the approach to Reinhart has also been mixed. After a week of pounding the judge as biased, Trumps team embraced his resistance to keeping the affidavit fully sealed.

An important side note: While Trump asked that Reinhart recuse from this case, there really isnt a case to step aside from at the moment, simply a search warrant that was requested and granted, followed by a dispute over how much of those records should be public. If Trump or someone else is charged criminally in connection with the missing records, a judge would be randomly assigned.

Even if the search warrant passes legal muster, Trumps allies say, the FBI blew past its constraints, seizing boxes at random and just hoarding as much as possible. While theres significant evidence to the contrary, Trump hammered on this point days after the search, focusing on alleged passports that were taken from his estate.

What Trump didnt mention at the time was what the DOJ officials had told him: the passports were flagged by a team of investigators specifically appointed to screen out any improper or privileged information that might be scooped up in an FBI search. The involvement of a so-called filter team signals that DOJ had taken care to ensure investigators didnt lay eyes on evidence they werent meant to see.

Even so, Trumps legal team indicated late Friday it was prepared to make a more concerted push on this front. Attorney Jim Trusty joined pro-Trump radio host Mark Levin to outline Trumps intention to seek a special master to review the materials seized by the FBI and ensure any privileged information isnt seen by the bureau.

Trusty didnt address why it took the legal team 11 days to settle on that strategy, following a year or more of dialogue with archivists and government lawyers. But he said a special master could review large swaths of material that Trumps team believes is subject to privilege claims, arguing that a DOJ-led filter team couldnt be trusted.

Trump promised in a social media post Friday that a legal filing would be forthcoming on this point, but by Sunday morning it still hadnt arrived.

Trump took a similarly lax approach when his former attorney, John Eastman, was fending off efforts by the Jan. 6 select committee to obtain thousands of emails that Eastman had claimed were protected by attorney client privilege with Trump being the client.

For months, a federal judge asked probing questions about Eastmans legal relationship with Trump and demanded that the former law professor produce paperwork proving when he became Trumps lawyer. But the ex-president never engaged in the suit, leaving Eastman wielding only an unsigned retainer agreement. The result? Eastman lost at nearly every turn and the judge issued a damaging ruling that he and Trump likely joined in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

Trumps attorneys have also contended that the FBI resorted to its most aggressive tactic an unannounced search and seizure of a former presidents home before exhausting less intrusive means. Bobb and other Trump allies noted that DOJ officials made a cordial visit to Mar-a-Lago on June 3. A few days later, DOJ called up Trumps attorneys and asked them to install a padlock on a basement storage room where some of the targeted records were being housed. Then there was radio silence for two months, Trump allies say, until the FBI executed the warrant.

Whats missing from that timeline has seeped out in subsequent reporting: DOJs interactions with Trumps team began only after the Archives had sought for more than a year to obtain the full slate of records held at Mar-a-Lago. The Archives asked DOJ to get involved after it discovered tranches of classified records on site.

In the spring, DOJ used a grand jury subpoena to try to obtain files housed at Mar-a-Lago. Then, soon after officials visited Trumps estate in June, the department issued a new subpoena for surveillance footage that might show important files being moved. Bobb told Ingraham that she believed the Trump team was open to releasing some of that surveillance footage. But they have not released that, or the subpoenas.

The best thing that Trump can probably hope for at the moment is that the search warrant was primarily a mechanism to recover records the government thought it was entitled to and isnt much of an indication of whether he or anyone else will face criminal charges.

Several former top DOJ officials have offered a similar take. But a lot remains unknown.

DOJ counterintelligence official Jay Bratt told Reinhart during Thursdays hearing that the investigation was in its early stages, suggesting that the matter isnt settled but also that charging decisions are a long way off.

Most cases about intentional or unintentional mishandling of classified information dont end in criminal charges. The governments primary goal is typically to end the so-called spill of material as quickly and completely as possible, with consequences for those responsible attended to later.

That means theres a remote likelihood of imminent developments as dramatic as the Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago search.

But Trumps lawyers will stay busy. The other legal threats he faces include DOJ investigations into the attempted overturning of the 2020 presidential election; civil suits over the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; a criminal election-fraud probe in Georgia; and a pair of New York investigations into the tax and accounting practices of his real estate empire and marketing of the Trump brand.

Meridith McGraw contributed.

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Trump's throw-everything-against-the-wall response to the Mar-a-Lago search - POLITICO

Donald Trump Junior decided to take to Twitter with a rant of posts and express his views on how he feels if daddy Trump still obtained the nuclear codes. This comes after the James Comeys Senate hearing and his brother Eric Trump said that Democrats arent even people. This seems as a usual Trump stunt and a way to protect the Trump reputation at all costs. Donald Trump Junior: "If Donald Trump actually still had the nuclear codes, it'd probably be good." Donald Trump has the nuclear codes. In the linen closet at Mar-A-Lago. By the way, for the record I would say that if Donald Trump actually still had the nuclear codes, it'd probably be good. See our enemies, our enemies might actually be like, okay, maybe let's not mess with them. I'm like, when they look at Joe Biden, they say you know what? We should attack now?

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Donald Trump Jr.: "If Donald Trump actually still had the nuclear codes, it'd probably be good." - Yahoo News

Lets circle four days in September Saturday, Sept. 10 through Tuesday, the 13th. They will be the most crucial dates in the 2022 political calendar since March 22, the day when the Liberals and New Democrats signed their non-aggression pact to keep the minority government in power until 2025. Under the unprecedented Supply and Confidence Agreement, the NDP promised to protect the Liberals back from unwanted elections in exchange for action on selected NDP policies a commitment that the Liberals, moving at the pace of a sedated turtle, are not rushing to honour.

The NDP is not happy. Its caucus leaders are signalling impatience. They need to demonstrate to the party faithful that casting NDPs lot with the Liberals is producing otherwise unattainable benefits. So far, they have nothing tangible to display. Collapse of the agreement is the last thing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs on the eve, or in the wake, of the four days in September.

Sept. 10 is the day when Pierre Poilievre, the pit bull of Parliament Hill, will become the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and leader of Her Majestys Loyal Opposition. Poilievre is an exceptional character. He is singularly proficient at nursing the publics grievances, large and small, real and imagined, serving them up as violations of Canadians freedoms, and using them as a hammer to attempt to demolish the character and credibility of the prime minister.

Poilievre is well aware of polls reporting Trudeaus declining popularity. Unless he listens to CPC moderates and there is said to be a first time for everything he can be expected to pursue his quarry with hunters zeal until he bags it or loses it.

Sept. 11-13 are the days for the Liberal caucus summer retreat in New Brunswick. Normally an annual event, it wasnt held for the last two years because of COVID.

The retreat is generally a relaxed affair, part social and part political. The leader and his lieutenants tell their backbenchers about all the wonderful things they are doing or contemplating doing, and the MPs report what they are learning from their constituents.

If the Liberals are relaxed this year, they will be in Never Neverland, not New Brunswick. The spectre of a re-energized opposition under Poilievre and the unhappiness of the NDP partners cannot be ignored.

Four things need to happen.

First: The Liberals cannot afford to give Poilievre three days to vilify them on free media while they are hidden away at the retreat. They have to fight back. That means putting Justin Trudeau out front, not simply defending his government thats old news to the media but by being aggressive, attacking Poilievre with heavy weapons from the Liberal armoury to drum home the Grit message that Poilievre is no harmless populist who plays fast and loose with the truth but rather a dangerous demagogue with a disregard for democracy.

Second: The Liberals need to use the retreat to adopt a battle plan to protect themselves in Parliament from war against a militant right-wing opposition that has nothing to lose, that will not relent in its efforts to defeat the government, to hog-tie every bill and to grind committee work to a halt.

Third: The Prime Minister must confirm the Liberals commitment to its promises to the NDP, announce a firm time schedule, from introduction of measures in the House through the Senate to royal assent, for the items the NDP wants fast-tracked. These start with free dental care for low-income families and include retraining to prepare petroleum workers for green energy jobs.

Four: Wake up that sleepy turtle.

Continue reading here:
Opinion | Liberals headed to Never Neverland, not New Brunswick, if they relax this September - Hamilton Spectator

Rep. Liz Cheney gives a concession speech to supporters after losing her bid for reelection to a primary challenger endorsed by former President Trump. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

Rep. Liz Cheney gives a concession speech to supporters after losing her bid for reelection to a primary challenger endorsed by former President Trump.

Liz Cheney has her sights set on Donald Trump.

The Wyoming congresswoman may have lost her bid for reelection this past week, but she is making it her mission to ensure Trump is never president again.

"I believe that Donald Trump continues to pose a very grave threat and risk to our republic," Cheney said on NBC's Today show the day after her primary loss. "And I think that defeating him is going to require a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents, and that's what I intend to be a part of."

Cheney is taking a few steps to try and make that possible:

Cheney has lots of money left over in her campaign about $7 million, much of which came from Democrats, by the way. That's pretty ironic, considering Cheney's very conservative policy positions.

Cheney has also spoken out against some Democratic entities that have controversially boosted election deniers during GOP primaries in hopes of helping Democrats' chances against them this November in competitive states and districts.

Cheney can transfer all of that money to her newly formed PAC. It will allow her to travel and maybe even run some advertising opposing Trump. But it would be limited.

Season 2 of the Jan. 6 committee hearings are expected to kick off some time in mid-September, and this is where Cheney has a key megaphone and may have her biggest effect on damaging Trump.

The hearings so far have dented Trump's image, even with his base. Before the FBI search of his Florida home, Trump's ironclad grip on the GOP base appeared to be loosening. He was starting to be seen by many Republicans as too chaotic, and the base was starting to look elsewhere (i.e. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis).

But, so far, the FBI search has reconsolidated the base around Trump, whose political identity is so strongly wrapped up in his own sense of victimhood.

Enter: Cheney. She will again command the microphone on the Jan. 6 committee rostrum with her diligent and focused way.

And with no primary left, she has only one focus.

Ahead of Rep. Liz Cheney's primary loss Tuesday, a sign stood on the side of a road in Casper, Wyo., in opposition to Cheney and in support of her primary opponent Harriet Hageman. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Ahead of Rep. Liz Cheney's primary loss Tuesday, a sign stood on the side of a road in Casper, Wyo., in opposition to Cheney and in support of her primary opponent Harriet Hageman.

This last point is flashy and has a lot of people weighing her odds.

In reality, Cheney knows she has little-to-no chance of winning a GOP presidential primary. Not only did she lose her House primary by more than 30 points, but her approval with Republicans nationally has nosedived since she has taken her strong stance against Trump.

The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, for example, showed Cheney with just a 13% favorability rating with her own party.

But winning the election and becoming president herself is hardly the point. Cheney wants to wreak as much havoc for Trump and all election deniers as possible.

She's good at making the argument and can take the case in a GOP primary to Republicans, who don't normally get that point of view from their preferred sources of information.

If she runs, she will battle to be on a debate stage with Trump, but that's highly unlikely to happen because Trump controls the levers of power in the party right now. But she can do retail campaigning and will command lots of media attention.

She's also open to an independent bid for president. Which way that could cut is less known. Again, she wouldn't win the White House, but if her candidacy is seen as likely to legitimately take votes away from Trump, it's something she would likely seriously consider.

After Cheney's loss, Trump declared on his social media platform, "Now she can finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion."

But that's hardly true. While Cheney won't be a congresswoman next year and probably won't be president, either, she's not going away.

Because, after all, as she said on NBC, "I will do whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office."

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The 3 prongs of Liz Cheney's campaign against Trump will they work? - NPR

OTTAWA Although three weeks remain in the Conservative partys leadership race, the talk in political circles has already shifted to whats next.

Pierre Poilievres victory is being treated as a foregone conclusion by his rivals and allies alike. He has upwards of $5 million in the bank, more than 300,000 party members signed up behind his cause, and the crowds turning up at get-out-the-vote events are assuaging earlier fears that all of the new members hes recruited wouldnt turn out to vote.

So, whether its planning House of Commons strategy or hashing out who might have which jobs, Tories and Liberals are already thinking about how Poilievre will reshape the countrys politics once the leadership race concludes on Sept. 10.

Between that day and the resumption of the House of Commons, hed have nine days to pull together at least a skeleton crew to kick off the fall sitting of Parliament.

His team is nixing all public discussion of transition planning, fearful of jinxing his victory.

With 62 sitting MPs endorsing him, Poilievre would have no shortage of names to select from for his front bench team of critics, who would lead the charge on the dominant files come fall.

Meanwhile, those who chose to support leadership rival Jean Charest are already contemplating their political futures after a highly charged campaign that has seen Poilievre attack the former Quebec premier mercilessly.

As a result, Jol Godin, one of the MPs who supported Charest, is telling reporters hes not sure hell stick around, and its expected there will be others who quietly decide not to run again.

Also eyeing their next steps are the staff. The ranks in the Official Opposition Leaders office thinned considerably in recent months as many opted to jump ship early instead of potentially being marched out the door several are now working in Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Fords government.

Conservative MPs grouse in a joking way that now it is their own offices that will be left bare as eager staffers make the jump to the opposition leaders office.

Poilievres entire inner circle isnt expected to move to Ottawa. Instead, like leaders before him, his campaign team would more likely pivot to start planning for the next general election, whenever that might be.

On paper, it could be at least 2025 thats the year the clock will run out on the agreement between the minority Liberals and New Democrats that has the latter propping up the government in exchange for implementation of some key NDP priorities.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has already signalled hes willing to pull the plug sooner though, and at least one Conservative MP is publicly arguing that the next election could come as early as this fall.

Long-time Tory Michelle Rempel Garner penned an essay this week laying out her argument that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will either call an election this fall or step down as Liberal leader in two years time.

Liberals dispute the idea of a fall election, but there is no doubt tongues are wagging in their circles about how much longer Trudeau will stay on by 2025, hell have been in power as long as his predecessor, Stephen Harper.

Where they agree with Rempel Garner is that a Poilievre-led Conservative party would be a much different Official Opposition than theyve faced off against since coming to power in 2015.

In her essay, Rempel Garner called it the coming end of the war of succession thats plagued the party since Harper stepped down in 2015.

The two leaders who followed him Andrew Scheer and Erin OToole only won their jobs after multiple rounds of ballot counting, and so never had a solid mandate, she argued.

This meant that neither of them could really escape the gravity of Stephen Harpers influence within the party or the aspirations and grudges of malcontents. The result of this was that the Conservative party never truly coagulated after Harpers defeat, she wrote.

However, all signs are pointing to a decisive first or at most, second ballot Poilievre victory in September. Poilievre will have the clear mandate Scheer or OToole never really were viewed as having.

Scheer and OToole also had to grapple with people waiting in the wings to take their jobs, and who ultimately ousted them as leader, she wrote and those people are all now gone.

Any behind-the-scenes agitators that facilitated the Scheer and OToole ousters might, having vanquished all other opponents, finally be satiated with the influence and policy direction that a Poilievre-led Conservative party will offer them, she wrote.

There is a good chance that swords will be put down and everyone will take a breather.

Not the Liberals.

How theyd handle Poilievre will be on the agenda at the governments cabinet retreat in early September just before the Tories wrap up their race and their caucus retreat right after.

One logistical concern is the fact that Parliament will still be hybrid, so MPs will be able to either attend in person or log-in from home.

Having a packed opposition bench facing off against a handful of Liberals will just add more fire to Poilievres narrative that the Liberals are out of touch, and debate is now underway in Liberal circles around how to neutralize that.

But thats a small thing in the face of a bigger issue: how to best counter Poilievres argument that it is the Liberals fault that inflation is so high and the cost of living seems to grow by the month.

In less than a month, the Conservative party will choose their new leader, and if youve heard some of the facts that their leadership candidates have been flipping, youll know that we need to work together to set the record straight this BBQ season, Liberal party headquarters wrote in an email to members this week, with talking points to counter the Tory narrative including a lighthearted list of puns.

But with polls suggesting they are losing support, one Liberal told the Star this week that the party knows facing off against Poilievre is no joke.

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Pierre Poilievres looming ascension to Tory leader has Liberals and some Conservatives wary about what comes next - Toronto Star