Trumps lawyers are telling us they have no defense in the secret document investigation.

[Jarqui]

9. Even Dershowitz conceded they had probable cause for the warrant and enough to indict

https://www.axios.com/2022/08/27/alan-dershowitz-doj-donald-trump-indictment
And that was three weeks ago.
More evidence has come out since.
Many other legal experts had similar sentiments on probable cause and indictment.

I previously covered why Trump's declassified claim is BS
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217173984#post15

In that thread, they now have a credible lawyer who warned Trump not to take the docs - on top of Trump ignoring the subpoena and his lawyer's letter swearing they had returned all the documents that had been marked classified (not necessarily still classified). And then the search warrant proved otherwise.

Beyond that, even if Trump had declassified the documents, they still belong to the US government (NARA) so the Special Master can't give those back to Trump - they don't belong to him.

Deliberative process privilege is only applicable in civil matters. This is a criminal case. So that won't work.

Executive privilege was settled by the Presidential Records act - the incumbent President prevails over the former President.

So the question is: who is guilty of what. Christina Bobb, who signed the letter, got a lawyer for that reason - she could be charged. Other members of Trump's staff may be guilty of crimes for mishandling these documents. Trump is bound to be looking for a fall guy. Aside from the national security issues, that is part of what the DoJ has to sort out and they need access to the documents to do their jobs.