Turley is Right

He’s also wrong. Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at George Washington University, in his op-ed regarding AG Merrick Garland’s dishonest (my term) leaks about the DoJ/FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago wrote, in part,

Someone is clearly lying. The Trump Team said that it was cooperating and would have given access to the government if it raised further objections. The Justice Department has clearly indicated that time was of the essence to justify this unprecedented raid on the home of a former president. Yet, Attorney General Merrick Garland reportedly waited for weeks to sign off on the application for a warrant and the FBI then waited a weekend to execute that warrant. It is difficult to understand why such communications could not be released in a redacted affidavit while protecting more sensitive sections.

Someone clearly is lying. One of the someones is empirically demonstrated to be Merrick Garland. Time plainly was not of the essence with those blatant, carefully considered delays in getting the warrant and then in actually executing it.

Whether Trump is also lying—both could be; press pontifications notwithstanding, this is not an either/or situation—could be just as empirically demonstrated: release the affidavit, wholly unredacted. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart surely has a copy in the court records that he could release should Garland continue to be intractable. That Trump is calling for the affidavit’s unredacted release is indicative of whether he’s lying. That Garland is resisting the affidavit’s release, even in redacted form, also is indicative of whether Trump is lying.

But Turley also is wrong.  [R]elease[]…a redacted affidavit while protecting more sensitive sections.

There are no “more sensitive” sections in the affidavit. There are no serious investigations that could be compromised by release of the unredacted affidavit. None in progress by an FBI that routinely lied to the FISA courts to get secret warrants. None by an FBI that falsifies evidence in pursuit of warrants. None by an FBI that colluded in the manufacture of a Russia collusion hoax by trading on a fake dossier. None by an FBI that attempted entrapment by faking a kidnap-the-Governor case.

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