THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2022

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
John Berman

Trump impeachment trial lawyer David Schoen conceded to CNN’s John Berman that former President Donald Trump's current legal team has not argued the Mar-a-Lago documents were declassified — despite Trump’s public claims they were.

Schoen, who represented Trump at his second impeachment trial and is very much still a spiritual member of Team Trump, was Berman‘s guest on Thursday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day.

Right off the bat, Berman noted that Team Trump’s latest legal filing contains no mention of documents seized in the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home having been declassified, as Trump has claimed repeatedly in public.

Berman went on to press Schoen until he ultimately admitted it is significant that the filing includes no mention of the declassification of any documents.

"I am holding in my hands right now the full filing from the Trump legal team that came out overnight," Berman said.

"Nowhere. Nowhere in here does it make the case that the documents at Mar a Lago were declassified. Why do you think that is?"

Schoen first claimed Trump's team was attempting to "keep the brief as narrow as possible" by "focusing on the question of the special master."

"If there is no evidence, and there doesn’t appear to be any that we have seen and CNN has talked to a lot of people that there was any declassification in the documents," Berman asked. "What risk would it have been for the lawyers to include it here?

Berman continued to push Schoen untilhe eventually agreed it is notable that Trump and his team have failed to mention the existence of declassified documents in any legal records.

MEDIA LOSER:
Sean Davis

The Federalist CEO Sean Davis baselessly accused Slate reporter Mark Joseph Stern of being the Supreme Court leaker in a tweet Wednesday. 

"Given that we're a 100+ days since the Dobbs leak, with zero resolution, I think we'd all like to know how a left-wing blogger at Slate is getting leaked SCOTUS documents before the [sic] appear on the SCOTUS website," wrote Davis.

It all started with a tweet from reporter Nicole Russell, who replied to a tweet Stern had posted about a new case on the court's docket to ask how he had gotten the information so quickly. Stern's not-so-secret trick was subscribing to the court's email list for reporters. Not a conspiracy. Not a leak. 

Former NRSC comms guy Matt Whitlock tweeted a screenshot and wrote, “I think we’d all like to know how liberal reporters like [Stern] are getting news out of the Supreme Court before it’s public.” 

The silly rumor spread through right-wing Twitter, amplified by Davis sharing it with his more than 300K followers and eventually reaching Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who retweeted the accusation.

Repeated attempts to get these pundits to delete their baseless allegations against Stern were ignored. Consider today's column a dishonorable mention for Whitlock, Hawley, and everyone else who shared the ridiculous accusations, but we're granting the big "L" to Davis because as CEO of a media outlet, he should know better.

Stern blasted his accusers in a statement to Mediaite for "promoting a verifiably false allegation against me, despite their knowledge that it is a defamatory lie," he said, calling them "nasty, deceitful, possibly psychotic bullies."

The A-Block

Trump's self-damning response

Former President Donald Trump appears to be his own worst enemy in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into classified and top secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

On Wednesday, Trump’s legal team issued a response to the DOJ's Tuesday night filing, which included a photo revealing several classified and even SSCI-marked documents. Curiously, none were marked as unclassified.

Trump’s defense of having these documents — which are the property of the U.S. government — is that he had a “standing order” to declassify any documents he took with him as president.

He is no longer president and there is no record that a declassification protocol was followed.

Trump’s team argued in their Wednesday night filing that the National Archives should have expected to find classified material among the documents Trump delivered in January from Mar-a-Lago because they were presidential records.

This is a clear acknowledgment that he was in possession of classified material — and a refutation of the argument he declassified everything.

On Wednesday, Trump took to his social media platform to push back on the DOJ’s rebuke of his special master and insisted “lucky I declassified.”

According to his own legal team’s filing, however, it appears he did not.

In another Wednesday statement, Trump appeared to acknowledge the documents recovered by the FBI at his Florida estate were in fact in his possession and not “planted” as he had previously declared.


In Other News...

‘He Should Be Extremely Worried’: George Conway Says Trump and Attorneys Could Be ‘Going to Jail’

Sarah Palin Loses Special Election as Democrats Flip House Seat

Karine Jean-Pierre Puts DeSantis and Greene on Blast: ‘These Are Things That We Have to Call Out’

RICHMAN: Democratic Strategist Kurt Bardella On MSNBC Grotesquely Claims GOP a ‘Mirror’ of Nazi Germany, Mussolini, Bolsheviks

RATINGS: The Five Leads Cable News in Total Viewers and the Demo

Must See Clip

Yikes

A Southwest Airlines pilot threatened to halt a flight to Cabo and remove all passengers after one used the iPhone AirDrop feature to send naked pictures to others on the plane.

“So here’s the deal: this continues while we’re on the ground, I’m going have to pull back to the gate, everybody’s going to have to get off, we’re going have to get security involved, and it’s a vacation that’s going be ruined," said the pilot, according to a video posted to social media by TikTok user Teighlor Marsalis.

"So you, folks, whatever that AirDrop thing is, quit sending naked pictures, and let’s get yourself to Cabo."

Watch here.

Links We Like

- Justin Baragona, The Daily Beast - Rachel Weiner and Jeremy Barr, Washington Post
How Wilde's Don't Worry Darling became Venice Film Festival's hottest ticket 
- Anton Fedyashin, National Interest
Shireen Abu Akleh receives posthumous award from U.S. Press Club 
- Ali Harb, Al Jazeera
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