'Out-maneuvered' Trump lawyers’ 'desperation' is showing in latest filing: legal expert

According to criminal defense attorney Shan Wu, the recent legal filing from Donald Trump's lawyers objecting to the Department of Justice's counter-argument on appointing a special master and what constitutes a "classified" document is an embarrassment to the legal profession.

In a column for the Daily Beast, the attorney who specializes in white-collar crime claims that, from what he has seen from the dueling motions, the former president's lawyers are overmatched and have no clue how to defend their client.

Summing up the new filing, Wu asserted that it "smacks of an extremism and desperation perhaps born of having been maneuvered into a legal corner by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department."

Using his own experience, Wu suggested that the tactics being used by Trump's lawyers are laughable -- such as arguing facts that are indisputable -- and are signs that they have no defense.

"These aren’t the usual ways of trying to head off criminal charges," he argued. "The usual way of defending against criminal investigations is for defense lawyers to do their own investigation and try to convince prosecutors that they are barking up the wrong tree."

"The DOJ’s clever response out-maneuvered Trump’s team by focusing on the fact that a criminal investigation involving national defense cannot take place without access to the materials implicating national defense and asking simply that the investigation be allowed to continue even as the parties fought over whether a special master was necessary and the exact scope of what the special master might oversee," he wrote before adding, "This focus also offers Judge Cannon a compromise by which she can still preserve a victory for Trump in seeking a special master for the ostensible purpose of promoting public faith in the investigation while also reducing the risk of a humiliating slam-dunk reversal on appeal."

Wu also suggested that Garland having served as a judge has given the DOJ an upper hand.

"Ironically, one of the perceived potential weaknesses of Attorney General Garland is that he has spent the majority of his career as an appellate judge and may have lost whatever combative prosecutorial instincts he might have possessed earlier in his career. But here, as the DOJ navigates uncharted legal territory with historically high stakes, Garland’s 20-plus years’ experience as an appeals judge may give the DOJ a big advantage," he wrote before wryly noting, "After all, who knows better how to fashion a judicial solution than a former judge?"

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