CLAY: We are still waiting for Merrick Garlandâs press conference, which was initially scheduled for 2:30 Eastern. Coming up on 20 minutes late for that. Itâs possible that weâre not going to get any of that for you, in which case weâd encourage to you keep hanging on for Sean Hannity coming up next on many of these same stations, as we wait to see what, if any, information of any consequence Merrick Garland is going to give us. We think that itâll be mostly bland. Will he take any questions? I guess the answer would be, no. Mostly bland, blaming people for being angry about this raid. But maybe weâll actually get some form of news.
BUCK: I think youâre gonna get boilerplate about how, âWe do our job without fear or favor, and the Justice Department operates without political consideration,â the usual smarmy, Merrick Garland razzle-dazzle, you know, the usual two-step. I think thatâs what youâre gonna see. But they know that this whole, âOh, yeah, they just raided a presidentâs home on Monday,â thatâs not gonna fly. You donât just do that and then act like itâs business as usual.
ReallyâŚ. Miranda gave us some really interesting context, Miranda Devine just now, about how they went when itâs so low-key. You know, in terms of time of the year, Mar-a-Lago is basically shut down now, Trump is up at Bedminster where we were hanging out a couple weeks ago. And so did they really think that they could sneak this one under the radar? Was that really the plan?
CLAY: Thatâs what we started talking about yesterday, Buck, because, remember, Trump was the one who broke the news that this raid has happened.
BUCK: But thereâs basically nobody there. I was thinking⌠I forgot. Mar-a-Lago, Clay, usually has members everywhere, you know, some of our buddies are hanging out down there. I mean, last time I was there I was high-fiving Mike Lindell. Like, you see people, right? Nobody was there this time.
CLAY: Yeah. And the fact that they made the Trump attorney stand out â reportedly, had to stand out â in the parking lot as this nine-hour-plus raid was going on, I just⌠I feel like somehow, some way, the bureaucracy overrated how quiet this was gonna be, or in some way didnât recognize how significant what they were undertaking was. And thatâs why the most interesting part of this, to me, could be if Merrick Garland walls himself off and said, âIâm notâŚ
âI wasnât involved in the decision. The FBI made the choice, that they had evidence that they needed to procure.â That would be interesting because it would suggest that this was such a mess, such a mushroom cloud that people are trying to start to scurry to avoid being caught up in this explosion. I donât know that weâll get that. And again, I find it hard to believe that Joe Biden didnât know, that Merrick Garland didnât know. Certainly, we know Christopher Wray had to know.
BUCK: So then who made the decision? Are we gonna believe that a relatively low-level, like head of the Palm Beach FBI? I guess would be in West Palm, wherever it is, field office, Palm Beach County FBI?
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: No way.
CLAY: It seems highly unlikely that somebody that far down the food chain could decide to do this. Again, weâve talked about this. You would have to have high-level contact with the Secret Service in order for this raid to take place.
BUCK: Yeah, and thatâs not even â
CLAY: I canât imagine incidents occurring at the highest possible level.
BUCK: And thatâs not even reassuring in its own way because, as I said, this is so politically volatile for the whole country, that it should be⌠You should have the attorney general looking at this and saying, âGuys, if weâre going in there, there has to be an ironclad reason. It has to be 100% by the book and it has to be explainable to the American people.â
CLAY: It canât just be, âWeâre gonna try to get Donald Trump over classified documents that are still in boxes inside of Mar-a-Lago,â because, again, thereâs no way that the intent, if itâs random boxes⌠I mean, I used as an example if youâve ever moved, how often does it take forever to even know where anything is packed? Trump was not involved in packing the boxes that were packed up to leave the White House.
BUCK: Yeah, and if anything, they should just have a different process than for the exit of a former president to make sure that thereâs somebody body to identify them. Iâm sure theyâve already looked over this stuff. You know, about this not something that has any⌠The boxes of possibly classified documents for obvious reasons have no criminal implications for Donald Trump himself, as a matter of holding and holding national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act. If thatâs their game here â and, Clay, I donât know, maybe it is. If thatâs their game here, the DOJâs credibilityâs in for a world of hurt beyond what weâve already seen. People are gonna say, âYou just canât trust these clowns at all with anything.â
CLAY: And think about how far we would have fallen down the criminality floodplain here. We would have gone from, âThis guy had direct interaction with Vladimir Putin, who stage a default coup to allow himself to be elected president,â to, âWell, some of the boxes that had random paraphernalia from inside of the White House were classified and shouldnât have been still locked up in a closet at Mar-a-Lago.â Itâs a pretty big difference in criminality.
BUCK: The government, as a matter of course â and I know this firsthand from being a classification originator â massively overclassifies tons of stuff. They are constantly marking things in a way that goes way beyond whether thereâs actually any sensitivity, you know, âcause a lot of it becomes a judgment call. âDoes this create sensitive issues for government relations? Classified!â You know, theyâll mark that âconfidentialâ or theyâll mark that âsecret.â
Well, what does that even mean, right? Obviously, super sensitive information about the capabilities of, like, the F-22 Raptor? Yeah, thatâs classified; so, we donât want our enemies to know what our planes could do, for example. But, you know, Trump sitting down and having a meeting with a foreign head of state where everyone knows what was said in the room or where everyone took photos together, and there is some handwritten note from Trump about it? They might say thatâs classified, but thatâs over-classification, is the point. So that happens all the time.
CLAY: Not only that, remember we had Kash Patel on in May.
BUCK: Yeah, and heâs a classification authority. Trump himself. Not to interrupt.
CLAY: Right. So, yeah, thereâs the possibility, the defense, one, could be that the warrantâs not valid because of judge-related issues because potentially the warrant was not specific enough; the warrant shouldnât have been granted, as weâve seen happened in Russia collusion. But also, thereâs a pretty strong defense here that Trump didnât know about the documents that were involved and also that some of these may have already been declassified.
Thatâs what Kash Patel came on and told us is a large extent of the issue. The president has the ability to declassify documents. Sometimes thereâs a conflict over whether that occurred or not. This is just a really messy case in general to be getting the amount of attention that itâs getting. And evidently, now weâre gonna have Kash Patel on, by the way, on Monday. Buck, youâre gonna be out tomorrow. And it looks like Attorney General Merrick Garland is going to be at least a half hour late now to his own press conference, and weâre not gonna get to talk about what he says.
BUCK: Heâs gonna ice I tell you, out here? I know he knows.
CLAY: You think they were waiting?
BUCK: âClay and Buckâs gotta get off air because Merrick is not gonna do well if Clay and Buck are on.â
CLAY: âThose guys are too powerful. We canât allow them to immediately handle what we say and dissect everything, and so weâre gonna wait âtil right after they go off the air.â So, Iâll be talking about it tomorrow. Buck, youâre gonna be out on Friday; youâll be back Monday.