Trump Raid at Mar-a-Lago is Unprecedented, and Another Example of Political Targeting
/Update: 8-11-22 This article was published before Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that he personally signed off on the warrant to search former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
On January 20, 2021, we were promised life would get back to normal with the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Monday was not normal.
I came home, and my sister had fried chicken tacos prepared. We sat in front of the TV, and my sister popped in her DVD collection of The Office, her comfort show. I only meant to finish my dinner and surf through Twitter before retreating to my room and working on another book. But the news was extraordinarily not normal for a so-called first-world nation.
The FBI had raided the home of former President Donald J. Trump at his home in Mar-a-Lago. Trump said in a statement, “After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by the Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservative in the upcoming midterm elections.”
Over 30 agents conducted the raid. The FBI would not allow Trump’s lawyers to be there, told them to turn off cameras, spent hours in Trump’s private office, broke into his safe, and even went through Melania’s wardrobe.
Trump was allegedly raided for taking classified files. As the Article III Project pointed out in their statement, “The President of the United States has the power to declassify any record he wants, so it’s pretextual legal nonsense for the Biden Justice Department to pretend President Trump broke any criminal statute by taking 15 boxes of his records with him when he left.” As PolitiFact has had to admit, “the president’s classification and declassification powers are broad.”
NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell reacted to the raid, “This is huge. A judge had to sign a warrant.”
That judge is Bruce Reinhart, who “left the local US Attorney’s office more than a decade ago to rep employees of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein,” according to the New York Post. Reinhart also has posted anti-Trump rhetoric on social media and donated to Barrack Obama.
David Axelrod said, “One thing is very clear. Garland would not have authorized this raid, and no federal judge would have signed off on it if there weren’t significant evidence to warrant it.”
It’s as almost as they forgot an FBI lawyer pled guilty of falsifying documents for Carter Page’s FISA warrant. He also got his law license back, despite his conviction. The Steele Dossier that caused so much trouble, was always bogus.
Katrina Trinko from the Daily Signal said, “I’d be a lot less worried about the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago if the whole Russian collusion thing hadn’t all been due to a tip from a Clinton lawyer.”
Blake Masters, Republican US Senate nominee in Arizona, said, “When street crimes go unsolved but opposition leaders are hounded by federal police, you’re living in a third world country.”
We know the FBI is not above political targeting. The court found the FBI plotted to kidnap my governor, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. Two men are being retried, but two were acquitted after the defense claimed the FBI entrapped them. The DOJ is obsessed with domestic terrorism, and whistleblowers allege they’re exaggerating the threat.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has some explaining to do, but everyone who treated him as some sort of paragon of virtue, while he was considered for the Supreme Court, was kidding themselves. Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia was stunned by the DOJ and FBI. “This same DOJ labeled parents in Loudoun County as terrorists and failed to enforce federal law to protect Justices in their homes. Selective, politically motivated actions have no place in our democracy.”
Even former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo thought the actions were shady. “DOJ must immediately explain the reason for its raid & it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives, or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation & legitimacy of January 6 investigations.”
Hillary Clinton had an illegal server in her home, mishandled classified documents, and deleted 33,000 emails. Her staff destroyed phones with hammers, and machines were wiped with Bleach Bit, yet the FBI did nothing. Even after Trump had won the presidency, he decided not to pursue criminal charges. I recall him even shutting down a “lock her up,” chant at a rally. Essentially, he told the crowd it was different during the campaign, but it was time to move on. But Hillary’s mishandling of classified emails has become a joke to her. She’s selling “But her emails” merchandise to her supporters right now. These double standards are fueling anger on the right today.
Trump was never forgiven for winning. He was constantly investigated, as his opposition went on a fishing expedition to bring him down and damage his credibility. Democrats and advisors went on television, nonstop, claiming there was credible information to prove collusion with the Russian government. Nothing ever came out of it, besides Pulitzer Prizes and the undermining of a sitting American president.
President Donald Trump was literally impeached for “abuse of power” because the Democrats deemed, he was scheming to launch “investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage.”
Mind you, Joe Biden was Vice-President when Trump was being monitored as a U.S. citizen. Biden allegedly suggested the Logan Act be used against General Michael Flynn. The Obama-Biden Administration worked to undermine an incoming administration, ultimately, reinstalling many of the same people when Trump was defeated for re-election.
When it comes to Trump’s “perfect phone call” with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy in 2019, he did ask Zelenskyy to talk to Rudy Giuliani, regarding corruption and Hunter Biden. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
There is a video of Biden bragging about a prosecutor being fired, and that same prosecutor was looking into Burisma, a natural-gas company where Hunter Biden served on their board. Hunter had introduced his father to a top executive less than a year before pressuring Ukraine into firing the prosecutor. Joe Biden claimed on the campaign trail several times that he had no dealings with his son’s business, which was also implausible and proven to be a lie.
Democrats knew Trump’s first impeachment wouldn’t result in his removal from office. Did they simply want to punish Trump for being genuinely on to something? Biden was thought of as the frontrunner.
Hunter Biden’s laptop contains evidence that Joe Biden was entangled in his son’s business dealings. They even had their accounts intertwined. Yet, nothing has happened. When the New York Post first reported on the laptop, they were locked out of social media right before the 2020 election and various officials and advisors swore up and down that it was Russian disinformation. It took more than a year for mainstream media to truly pick up the story. Even CNN’s Brian Stelter has admitted it’s real and damaging to Biden.
Now, the roles are reversed. Biden is the president and Trump is the potential challenger, who is the frontrunner. Is this move Biden flexing his power for political gain? I wouldn’t hold my breath that a tie would be found connecting Biden directly to the raid. During scandals in the Obama White House, there was always someone else to point the finger at. Even something as serious as Benghazi was, ultimately, blamed on Hillary Clinton. And when it came to the IRS targeting scandal, ideologues like Lois Lerner didn’t need to be told to go after conservatives (Judge Bruce Reinhart has, interestingly enough, defended Lerner in the past).
It could very well be that lower FBI enforcement was overzealous and committed this act without informing higher-ups. Considering there was a raid on the home of the former President of the United States, that’s incredibly egregious, and a good chunk of Americans will never buy it. Politico Playbook quoted one legal expert, “If they raided his home just to find classified documents he took from The White House, he will be re-elected president in 2024, hands down. It will prove to be the greatest law enforcement mistake in history.”
President Biden remained quiet on the issue when he was repeatedly asked about it on Tuesday. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment and dodged many questions during her briefings, which did not inspire confidence.
Monday night, after my sister woke up from her nap on the couch, we both chatted about the unprecedented nature of what had happened. I told her it was, “Concerning.”
Ultimately, I don’t believe what happens to Trump is solely about Trump. Sure, there are reasons to dislike the guy. There are policies you can debate, behaviors you can abhor, and then there’s January 6. But it wasn’t a plot to overthrow the government like Jake Tapper and other CNN commentators like to pretend. As John Bolton noted, "As somebody who has helped plan coup d'état—not here, but other places—it takes a lot of work."
To quote Bolton again, "You have to understand the nature of what the problem of Donald Trump is. He's — to use a Star Wars metaphor — a disturbance in the Force."
Trump wasn’t supposed to stop being a celebrity. He was supposed to remain a cool pop culture figure who gave money to both sides, made entertaining television, and threw fun parties. He wasn’t supposed to run for president—especially not as a Republican—and he wasn’t supposed to win. Jeb Bush was the anointed appointed for the GOP establishment, and Trump spoke out against the foreign policy of Bush-Cheney and tried something new. The base rejected the ways of old, embraced Trump, and he showed success with great achievements like the Abraham Accords. Hillary Clinton and the media wanted Trump to be the GOP nominee, so he could go down in flames. But when he beat her out, it was another repudiation of elitist politics. And then, Trump promised to drain the swamp, and cut bureaucracy and regulations. He didn’t do enough, but he enraged his haters along the way.
Most of all, Trump is resented for having such devoted love from his base. When Congressman Peter Meijer lost his reelection primary to John Gibbs, the neo-cons at the Bulwark were angry at Meijer for not realizing his true issue wasn’t that Democrats paid money to get Gibbs elected; the problem was the constituents wanted Gibbs at all. There are high-brow elitists within the GOP who are aware they need the Republican vote, yet they deeply resent them. It’s nothing new. Radio legend Rush Limbaugh talked about this frequently.
Trump made many Americans feel heard. He listened and forged a campaign on what his constituents wanted to hear, wanted to be done, made promises to get it done, and tried to fulfill them. Republicans don’t see Trump as a perfect representation of who they are; they see him as a fighter who is standing between them and the powers that be who wish to cripple and destroy their way of life, and the nation they love. So, when “the swamp” attacks Trump, it feels extremely personal to his voters. I’m sure you’ve seen the famous meme of Trump, “In reality, they’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just in the way.”
As pundits and politicians have noted, the targeting of Trump will only fuel his base to stand beside him. If the FBI would raid the home of a former president over a records dispute, what are they willing to do to everyone else?
If you thought Biden’s promise of “normalcy” would be a boring government that functions for the benefit of the people, you haven’t been paying attention to the sort of man he’s historically been. While this isn’t normal for a healthy America, it’s business as usual for Biden.
The featured photo thumbnail is by Gage Skidmore.
