That Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart fully accepted all of the Department of Justice's redactions is a giveaway that nothing will be given away when it is released Friday, Judge Andrew Napolitano told Newsmax.
"Here's what I think the DOJ has done, which was very shrewd of them: I think they have begun making presentations to their grand jury in Washington, D.C., Eric, on the basis of documents seized in the raid on former President Trump's home, which would make it impossible under the law for the judge to reveal any reference to those documents," Napolitano told Thursday's "Eric Bolling The Balance."
Bolling feared the redactions will be so significant that the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence ultimately will reveal nothing to the public Napolitano agreed.
"I just have this feeling from the language he used in his order — and the reference to the grand jury that those grand jury presentations have been made — but you are quite correct: He does state in the order that he accepted the redactions as the government presented them to him," Napolitano continued.
"Now we all thought there'd be some haggling, some give and take between the judge and the DOJ, but he accepted it. Bottom line: What we'll get tomorrow will be a bare-bones skeleton that probably will not inform us of anything meaningful or significant.
"There'll be no proper nouns. There'll be no reference to references to people."
Ultimately, DOJ was going to force Reinhart — a donor to former President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign — to fight to unmask some of their redactions, specifically as related to justify searching a former president's home, according to Napolitano.
"But if the judge accepted everything that the Feds wanted to black out, you know that they want a blackout that specificity, because they don't want to tip their hands to the former president, to his lawyer, about exactly what they know and exactly what they're looking for," Napolitano concluded.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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