Meet the 4 Possible Candidates for Special Master, 1 Has Troubling Past Proving Incapable of Impartiality
On Monday, the Trump-appointed judge currently weighing whether or not to appoint a “special master” to the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the former president was given four recommendations regarding who to appoint to such a position.
One of the four recommendations, Northwestern University law professor Heidi Kitrosser, has a history of promoting anti-Trump sentiments on her social media pages. In fact, several recent tweets posted by Kitrosser suggest she believes Trump should be indicted for violating the Espionage Act.
On behalf of National Security Counselors (NSC), Kel B. McClanahan, the group’s executive director, addressed the letter to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who announced her “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master via a court order.
National Security Counselors is a group founded to inform the public “about what its government does in the name of national security,” McClanahan told The Western Journal via email. “NSC exists to perform four primary functions: to lawfully acquire from the government material related to national security matters and distribute it to the public, to use this material in the creation of original publications discussing the respective subjects, to advocate for intelligent reform in the national security and information and privacy arenas, and to provide a low-cost alternative to certain deserving clients involved in security law or information and privacy law-related proceedings,” he added.
Trump’s representation had previously filed a motion demanding the FBI stop reviewing the documents until a special master is appointed. This “special master” would be an unbiased third party outside of the government’s influence responsible for reviewing the documents in question.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the DOJ is expected to file a counterclaim on Tuesday “noting that a special DOJ team already has withheld from investigators some of the seized documents” which may be protected under attorney-client privileged.
In McClanahan’s letter to Judge Cannon, he recommends four possible special masters: Kitrosser, George Mason University Policy and Government Dean Mark J. Rozell, University of Kentucky Law Professor Jonathan Shaub and University of Michigan-Dearborn Political Science Professor Mitchel A. Sollenberger.
Recommendations for Special… by The Western Journal
In his message to The Western Journal, McClanahan stressed that the four experts “are not professionally affiliated with NSC” and that the letter was an “informational filing, not a piece of advocacy.”
“None of us takes a formal position on who Judge Cannon should choose as a Special Master, or even if she should choose one at all. The purpose of this letter was to bring four highly qualified scholars from across the ideological and political spectrum to her attention whom she might not discover on her own due to the narrowness of the subject matter and the time-sensitivity of the case. There may be other equally qualified experts whom we did not mention. What Judge Cannon does with this information is entirely up to her,” McClanahan wrote.
All four experts have a history of siding with the current administration.
In a May Op-Ed for The Hill co-authored by Rozell and Sollenberger, the two professors praised President Joe Biden’s move to reject Trump’s claim to executive privilege over a series of documents sought by the House of Representatives’s Jan. 6 investigative committee. They called the move a “significant victory for government transparency.”
Furthermore, on Aug. 23, Schuab told Reuters that, in claiming the documents obtained in the Mar-a-Lago raid were protected under “executive privilege,” Trump was mistaken.
“The person who gets to decide whether executive privilege is asserted is the president, so the special master would be Biden,” Shaub said. “That is the only person who is legitimately able to decide whether turning something over to the FBI would harm the national interests.”
Kitrosser stands out from her colleagues as being especially vitriolic in her criticism of Trump.
There’s no other way to explain Trump’s immigration policy. It’s just bigotry. https://t.co/7d3t7Ir0KL
— Heidi Kitrosser (@heidikitrosser) November 26, 2019
People like Moss, Bowers, Raffensperger … they put to shame all of the spineless souls who enable Trump.
— Heidi Kitrosser (@heidikitrosser) June 21, 2022
I read that. Just boggles the mind, what makes Carlson do what he does. Or Trump. Or Cruz. Or Vance. Or the other shameless, spineless, narcissists.
— Heidi Kitrosser (@heidikitrosser) February 24, 2022
It gets worse than. Kitrosser even went as far as to promote the theory that Russian President Vladimir Putin controlled Trump.
This would seem to be a massive conflict of interest if Judge Cannon were to appoint Kitrosser to the role of “special master.”
Then again, when it comes to President Biden and the DOJ, what else would you expect?
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