The This is the Libertarian Podcast

from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church,

and the Libertarian is Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution. He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at NYU,

and is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

And Richard, boy-oh-boy, today we have a lot to discuss.

Yesterday, former President Trump was arraigned in Florida on 37 criminal charges including 31 counts for

willful retention of national defense information and six other counts

including obstruction withholding documents corruptly concealing documents, scheming to conceal documents, and making false statements to the FBI.

And where do we start here? I think we should go over the facts of the case to set a baseline and then go from there. So if you've gone through the indictment, it's quite the read. As alleged, as laid out, it starts with the National Archives asking for documents from former President Trump,

former President Trump sending back some documents in those in those boxes included classified documents

which made national archives

refer that to the Justice Department.

That's how we got an investigation, a grand jury asking for more documents in May of

last year.

At this point, as alleged, the Justice Department contacted Trump said

you need to send any more classified documents, at which point Trump and his co-conspirator in this case,

co-defendant, I suppose in this case, co-defendant, apologies, his body man.

Trump asked the body man to move boxes so that his attorney who was coming to look through the

boxes wouldn't know that there were another 67 or 70 or so. The attorney shows up

looks at the documents, looks through the boxes, finds a bunch of classified

...