by Rod Williams, August 10, 2022- If one reads this blog or follows me on Facebook, you know that I am no fan of Donald Trump. I think he is a delusional egotistical jerk or an evil person or both. Yes, I am pleased he closed the border, gave us energy independence, gave us a Supreme Court that went a long way toward restoring the Constitution, and did some other positive things. But, Mussolini made the trains run on time. The good Trump did does not make up for his attempt to subvert the outcome of an election and to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He is a dictator-want-a-be. He is a dangerous man.
However, I am not comfortable with the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. For one, it seems politically unwise. and secondly, it seems an abuse of power. As stated in some of the articles below and elsewhere, this has made some of Trump's supporters who may have been ready to move on from Trump rally around him. This confirms for them that the "insiders" and "deep state" are in charge and will do anything to silence a man who tries to "drain the swamp." This deepens the divide that was already deep. It is a big boost to Donald Trump's remaining relevant. The Justice Department poked a bear that was beginning to look sleepy. This has reenergized Trump's supporters.
Given the lack of FBI action on Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, and others, and the history of the FBI and the Steele dossier, and the agency either being duped or knowingly willingly being used to tarnish and spy on Trump, this raid looks suspect. Even if the raid was not politically motivated, it sure looks like it to a lot of people. Unless it is explained, it will look that way to me too.
Some on the right, including my "friends" on Facebook, are saying it is time for an armed rebellion. A lot of people are riled. I hope they get a grip and take a deep breath, but there are a lot of crazies on the right these days. There are those who believe school shootings are false flag operations, that we have a planned imminent food shortage crisis, that Hillary Clinton is part of some Satanic cult, and all kinds of other nutty stuff. Some of them may take up arms and start killing people.
No one should be above the law. Justice should be served. However, I can not help but ask, was this armed raid necessary? Trump had been in conversation with the Justice Department about those missing documents. He had already returned a lot of them. If this was about missing documents, then they could have recovered them without an armed raid. I suspect something else is going on. Maybe the people at the justice department thought they would find 'smoking gun' evidence tieing Trump to the January 6 coup attempt. If so, they need to say so.
I wish we had a mainstream press that could see this raid as something that needed to be explained. I wish they would demand answers and keep this on the front page until they got them. Unfortunately, the mainstream press is as polarized as the rest of America. They are going to protect liberals and turn a blind eye to liberal wrongdoing and liberal abuse of power. There are no 'fair and balanced" media outlets in America with enough clout to make a difference. Fox News will run this story for weeks, but unfortunately, Fox news only reaches people who already agree with them.
I wish there could be a genuinely bi-partisan congressional inquiry into this raid, but that is not going to happen, either. Congress is correct to want the truth about Trump's attempt to illegally hold on to power and prevent the peaceful transfer of power. I just wish they were equally as concerned about abuse of power when the abusers are Democrats.
This has not made me want to support Trump but has made me more sympathetic to his supporters. For the good of the country, the Justice Department needs to explain why this raid was necessary. If they have something major on Trump they need to arrest him or indite him quickly. They need to act or have a good explanation as to why this raid had to happen.
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Americans Deserve an Explanation on FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Search
By THE EDITORS, National Review, August 10, 2022 - The United States is a land of propositions. One of those propositions is that no man — not even the president — is above the law. Another proposition is that those who temporarily wield power must not use it to harass or disadvantage their political opponents. Occasionally, these propositions can come into tension. Monday night’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago provides us with one of those occasions.
There is nothing wrong per se with the investigation or prosecution of political figures. Indeed, that the most powerful and popular people in the country may be held responsible for their crimes serves as the very definition of equality. But, because the perception of impropriety can be so damaging to the political order, the occupants of positions of power have a special obligation to tread lightly when dealing with their ideological opponents. The difference between a free republic and a banana republic is not whether the powerful can be held to account, but whether the powerful are held to account legitimately, in a manner that is not a transparent pretext for ulterior motives. Does the Department of Justice understand this? The jury is still out.
... But after the Steele dossier, the FISA surveillance of Carter Page, the Mueller report, and the near endless web of implications and insinuations that tied up American politics for the first two and a half years of Trump’s presidency, one can no longer fall back on such reflexive credulity. If the government has a case, it must make it as bluntly as it can — and it must make it now. .... President Biden must explain why it was necessary for his administration to stage an unannounced search at the home of a potential presidential rival. (Read more)
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SHAPIRO: The Day The FBI Raided Donald Trump
By Ben Shapiro, DailyWire.com, Aug, 10, 2022- ...We have not yet seen the warrant for the raid, the warrant application, or the underlying evidence; presumably, the head of the FBI and the head of the DOJ, Attorney General Merrick Garland, would have had to sign off on the raid. And, to put it mildly, the basis for such a raid – a raid authorized by a current presidential administration on the leader of the prior administration and frontrunner for the nomination in 2024 – seems extraordinarily weak. In 2015, former Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger only received a misdemeanor charge for stuffing classified documents down his pants; in 2016, the FBI investigated Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails but certainly never raided her home or offices, despite finding that it was “possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account,” complete with access to classified information. President Trump, by contrast, was president – which means he had plenary authority to declassify any document. Yet it was Trump who was raided.
If the basis for the raid is anything less than bedrock-solid, therefore, the most serious questions of political legitimacy will be on the table. After all, this amounts to the current administration authorizing a raid on the head of the prior administration; it apparently centers on a matter unrelated to events surrounding January 6 and the aftermath of the 2020 election. It seems, on its face, pretextual. We won’t know whether it isr isn’t until we see the underlying documentation. But without the sort of trust the FBI has fai oled to cultivate over the past few years, the clamor for such documentation will rightly be deafening.
Suspicions are certainly in order, given the behavior of the FBI over the course of the last few years. (read more)
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Trump Can’t Be ‘Disqualified’ Over Documents
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 10, 2022- The warrant under which federal agents searched Donald Trump’s Florida home hasn’t been made public, but press leaks suggest that it was related to the former president’s suspected mishandling of official documents. That has prompted speculation that Mr. Trump could be prosecuted under a law governing the misuse of federal government documents, which includes a provision for disqualification from federal office. According to this theory, if Mr. Trump is convicted, he would be ineligible to serve a second term as president. It won’t work. The theory is deficient on both statutory and constitutional grounds. (read more)
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The raid on Mar-a-Lago could shake America’s foundations
The Economist, by Lexington, Aug. 10, 2022- The raid had conjured a Trumpian Eden: the nation’s eyes were riveted upon him once again; Republican legislators who had been edging away rallied behind him, as did potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination; some of his supporters were again calling online for a civil war to defend their champion. Mr Trump was able to present himself in his favourite light, as the victim of dark, partisan forces out to protect the establishment by dragging him down. Having trashed the fbi and Department of Justice for years, he had prepared not just his core believers but probably half the country to suspect that the rule of law was being undermined, not honoured.
For these reasons and more, the raid is a nightmare for America. Merrick Garland, the attorney-general, would have anticipated that. ... If Mr Garland made the decision himself to proceed, as seems likely, he must have concluded that evidence pointing to criminality was so overwhelming he had no choice. ...
Mr Trump was already expected to run a third time for president. He seems certain to do so now. Imagine that the raid yields evidence of criminality, leading to his indictment. ... Even a speedy trial and conviction would be less likely to bar a Trump candidacy than to start more rounds of litigation. The constitution, which spells out the qualifications for serving as president, is silent on the question of a criminal record. ...
Lawmakers who crawled back to Mr Trump after the January 6th insurrection are not likely to abandon him over a crime like making off with classified documents, particularly given a president’s vast power to declassify information.
The raid on Mar-a-Lago may have been necessary to serve justice. A prosecution may eventually prove necessary as well. The hope is that the rule of law has weight enough to survive the contest. (read more)
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The Mar-a-Lago raid is pure political intimidation
by Amber Athey, The Spectator, Aug. 8, 2022- ... One would assume the bar should be exceedingly high for the Department of Justice to execute a search warrant on a man who was previously the leader of the free world. That is not the case here. Nor, sadly, is it surprising, given the seemingly endless fishing expedition that Biden and the Democrats have subjected Trump to over the past year and a half. ... The decision to send agents into Trump’s home over a quibble about document retention reeks of political intimidation. .... When Bill Clinton was found to have inappropriately kept gifts and furniture from the White House, he returned the items and the situation was treated as a misunderstanding. The Clintons’ home was not raided by the FBI. Why was Trump’s? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that violating the Presidential Records Act can bar someone from running for political office again.
Naturally, Trump’s critics will celebrate the FBI’s raid. They will be blissfully unconcerned that the gratuitous and unjust investigation of political opponents is just the kind of authoritarianism they warned would be ushered in by the Trump administration. Remember, the Biden administration is going to restore our norms and institutions! (read more)
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