During an interview on MSNBC early Thursday, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance ripped the push from the Trump team for the establishment — again — of a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, at Mar-a-Lago. Creating such a set-up for the review of sensitive, protected materials would facilitate a review of some of the disputed materials relevant in Trump’s criminal case over having harbored government docs without the necessity for trekking outside that southern Florida area.
“It’s not a reasonable request,” Vance said in footage flagged by Raw Story. “For one thing, this is Trump asking for special treatment that no other defendant would get. No one gets a SCIF built in their home or, in this case, I suppose their hotel, when they’re involved in this sort of litigation, for a lot of obvious reasons including cost, and yet again time and delay. But for Trump this is a particularly disingenuous request because a federal judge does not have the ability to order the intelligence community to locate one of these highly secure facilities in a specific place, and it’s easy to understand just the lunacy of the notion that someone who’s accused of mishandling documents would be entrusted with a SCIF.”
Trump has also already been clamoring for a change in the handling of his other criminal case that originates with Special Counsel Jack Smith, which covers his attempts after the last presidential election to stay in power despite his documented loss to Joe Biden. Specifically, he’s spoken on Truth Social of pushing for the recusal — effectively meaning removal from proceedings — of Judge Tanya Chutkan.
Chutkan, who was nominated for her post by then-President Barack Obama, has previously been involved both in matters related to January 6 and more directly with Trump, in the latter area having ruled at one point in favor of the House committee that investigated the riot gaining access to Trump administration records. She has also dealt with proceedings related to individuals who joined the Capitol mob.
