"And, again, that is linked to the risk review and the criminal case and even -- very kind of tantalizing -- the DOJ says in their, filing 'look, judge, your ruling is actually stopping us, impeding us is the word they used, from finding documents, other classified documents. which could be out there, even in other places.'"

"So this raises the possibility that they suspect those empty folders, those contents, might have ended up somewhere else," he elaborated. "And the question of somewhere else is why they need to get the investigation back up and running."

I do recall hearing about cases that could never be prosecuted because doing so would reveal top secret material to the public.

I recall something about this with regard to the Gitmo detainees...

Peter or J would know better than I, but I would assume that a defense attorney would threaten to demand copies of and introduce at trial all the sensitive materials....

In the case of Trump, his lawyers asked for an extraordinary remedy and did not make a  case for it, so the judge did. The judge worried that the private materials, such as medical records , intermingled with the stolen documents were being deprived from Trump, She ventured into executive privilege protecting documents held by a former member of the executive branch against the current executive branch---and Trump's lawyers did not even make that claim.  Apparently, it's the two-president's legal theory.  Or, the any or multiple former president's theory.

Edward VIII had precipitated the crisis shortly after taking the throne by publicly announcing that he and Mrs. Simpson were to be married just as soon as her divorce from her second husband was finalized. The British establishment had already decided that Mrs. Simpson was inherently unsuitable to fill the role of Queen Consort and further, it was widely assumed in the most influential circles that her romance with the then-new king was motivated by her lust for money or power or both.

Hence, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin engaged in a naked power play by expressly advising King Edward that the majority of the public was opposed to his proposed marriage to Mrs. Simpson, and further indicating that if His Majesty pursued the marriage in direct contravention of his ministers' advice, all members of His Majesty's government would therefore resign immediately and en masse.

The bachelor-playboy king's subsequent decision to abdicate the throne, having "found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love,"  suddenly thrust his younger brother Albert and his young family into the public spotlight.

Since Edward was unmarried with no children, Albert was Heir Presumptive to the throne. Albert was proclaimed by the Royal Council on Accession as King George VI, and Albert's then-14-year-old daughter Princess Elizabeth was likewise proclaimed George VI's Heiress Presumptive.

(Edward's abdication also prompted an immediate backlash in the neighboring Irish Free State, where the British monarch was then still recognized as its constitutional head of state. The Irish Parliament moved immediately that very same day to amend the Irish constitution and remove any and all mention of the British monarch. The following day, it passed the External Relations Act and asserted their country's unilateral right to appoint its own diplomats and sign its own treaties and agreements. And that's how the Irish Free State transformed into the present-day Republic of Ireland.)

George VI's Queen Consort Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) never forgave Edward for abdicating the throne. The acrimony between the two became acute after the king was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1951 at age 56. She blamed all the stress her shy husband endured as king on what she saw as her brother-in-law's earlier irresponsibility, which culminated in the shirking of his greater duty to his realm.

Because of what she had experienced in 1936 and the resultant profound impact it had on her own family, the Queen Mother was therefore staunchly opposed to the idea of monarchial abdication just on principle and impressed that upon her 25-year-old daughter when she ascended to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.

Having closely observed how her father and mother conducted themselves in public during the Second World War, Elizabeth II came to see the primary responsibility of the monarchy as providing its subjects with a shared sense of national purpose, stability and continuity. In her worldview, abdication undermines that role. That's probably why she never stepped aside for her son Charles in her later years. I've no doubt that she probably counseled Charles to likewise reject any notion of abdication once he came to the throne.

So, I'd say the odds of King Charles III's abdication are somewhere between null and void. But there's no question that his late mother's reign has cast a very long shadow over his own. Whether he can eventually get out from under it and forge his own path remains to be seen.

Plaintiff's Proposed Candidates

           The Honorable Raymond J. Dearie (ret.) - former Chief Judge of the United StatesDistrict Court for the Eastern District of New York, served on the Foreign IntelligenceSurveillance Court, formerly the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

           Paul Huck, Jr.--founder, The Huck Law Firm, former Jones Day partner, formerGeneral Counsel to the Governor, former Deputy Attorney General for the State of Florida.

Government's Proposed Candidates

            The Honorable Barbara S. Jones (ret.) - retired judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, partner in Bracewell LLP, and special master in In re: in the Matter of Search Warrants Executed on April 28, 2021 and In the Matter of Search Warrants Executed on April 9, 2018.

           The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith (ret.) - retired Circuit Judge of the United States Courtof Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, special counsel in Hunton Andrews KurthLLP, and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.

Donald Trump nominated the "Godfather of the Federalist Society in Miami" to be the special master of the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago.

That's how Paul Huck, Jr. was described to The Washington Post in 2020 by, "José Félix Díaz, a former state legislator and consultant with Ballard Partners, a powerful lobbying firm closely associated with Trump."