The truth is these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand

During the very brief interlude when I was a lawyer of sorts, I spent a lot of time looking through company documents. I was often startled by the kinds of things people would write down. Although I never came across a memo literally entitled “When Are We Going To Meet With Our Main Competitor To Fix Prices?” I read plenty of memos that pretty much made it clear that something like that was the subject of internal discussion.

I was reminded of this when I read this story just now, about some very intriguing legal hijinks in the wee wee hours last night and this morning:

If you blinked you missed it.

Former President Donald Trump filed an emergency request to a federal judge late Monday night to prevent the National Archives from sending sensitive records to Jan. 6 committee investigators by Friday. And just after midnight, Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected it, contending the request itself was legally defective and “premature.”

The unusual exchange, which happened in a span of two hours, comes as Chutkan is already considering an earlier request by Trump to prevent Congress from peering into his White House’s records about his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump sued to block the National Archives from turning the records over last month, after President Joe Biden declined to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Archives indicated it would turn the papers over to lawmakers by Friday, unless a court intervened.

Chutkan heard arguments in the suit last week and promised to rule quickly on Trump’s initial emergency request. But she seemed inclined to reject it, questioning the legal basis for a former president to claim executive privilege over records when the sitting president and Congress disagree.

The National Archives has indicated that Trump is seeking to block at least 750 pages out of an initial 1,500 unearthed in response to the Jan. 6 committee’s request for records about the former president’s effort to overturn the election. Many of those papers are culled from the files of senior Trump aides like Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller and Patrick Philbin. They also include call and visitor logs.

Trump’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, issued his second request Monday night, asking Chutkan to approve an “administrative stay” of her own ruling even before she issued it. That way, Binnall argued, Trump would have a chance to appeal her decision before the Archives began delivering hundreds of pages to congressional investigators.

Binnall also warned Chutkan that if she didn’t rule on Trump’s first request by Wednesday, he would go immediately to the appeals court and ask it to step in. He noted that Thursday is Veterans Day and that the National Archives plans to send Trump’s papers to Congress at 6 p.m. Friday.

Apparently there are things in those documents that Trump’s lawyers really really really don’t want Congress to see. From a law talking perspective, the argument they’re asserting — that a former president should be able to block Congress seeing government documents that both Congress and the current president think Congress should see — is beyond frivolous, which means there’s probably no better than a 50/50 chance that the Furious Five issue some sort of restraining order before Friday. (Not to mention that appealing a ruling that hasn’t been issued yet is Lionel Hutz territory).

Given what we already know, just imagine what we don’t know. With a little luck we won’t have to imagine much longer. Then maybe Merrick Garland can turn his attention away from whatever the hell it is he’s been doing for the past 10 months and prosecute a few big fish for conspiring to overthrow the government of the United States, which last time I checked is still a crime.