If you've been following this case, you know we left off with the DOJ giving Kash Patel use immunity to secure his testimony.

Wait, what's use immunity? I attached a quick explainer (from my blog)

Trump has an uphill battle here because the 11th circuit has already sided with the DOJ once, and allowed the DOJ to continue its criminal investigation as this appeal is pending.

Trump is trying to argue that the 11th Circuit doesn't have jurisdiction to hear this appeal at all because the appointment of a special master wasn't a final, appealable order.

The problem is he already lost once on this argument with the preliminary injunction issue, so he'll lose again.

Then he argues that Judge Cannon didn't "abuse her discretion" with the special master order.

"Abuse of discretion" is just the legal standard. . .

Judges have a lot of discretion. To overturn certain kinds of order on appeal, you have to show that they abused that discretion.

No surprise, Trump's main argument is that he had full authority to keep or declassify these documents.

The theory of his case is that Trump had the authority to designate any of his records as 'personal.'

Therefore, according to Trump, the dispute is over whether or not these records are personal or presidential.

See what his lawyers are trying to do?

How cases are framed matters. The DOJ says this is a stolen documents case. Trump stole documents. End of story.

Trump says, "Not so fast. I can't steal personal documents so the issue is whether they were presidential or personal."

He will lose. It's absurd to think that nuclear secrets are personal.

Yesterday a Florida court sanctioned his lawyers for that frivolous RICA case against Hillary Clinton and the DOJ.

This is a losing argument and fails the laugh test, but it isn't frivolous.

(The laugh test is known to criminal defense lawyers everywhere.)

He acknowledges is a procedure for declassifying documents, but says as president, he had final authority over everyone involved in the process, so had authority to circumvent the process any way he chose.

Trump returns to his greatest hits: This is a PRA (presidential records act) matter, so the remedy was a civil suit, not a criminal suit.

Again, this is an attempt to frame the issue as a dispute under the PRA instead of a former guy walking off with government documents.

Notice how smoothly his lawyers (Trusty & Kise) transition from "the president can do whatever he wants" to "Trump is a private citizen entitled to protection from government abuse." (Screenshot)

He then transitions to the argument that a former president now a private citizen creates "special circumstances.”

I have no idea why Post 6 showed up as sensitive. Possibilities:

-Mastodon doesn't like me.
-My computer is haunted.
-I did something wrong.

Okay, onward.

He argues that all records are presumptively personal and because he didn't return them, they are presumptively his and therefore he has a possessory interest in them and it's the government's burden to prove they were NOT personal.