Call it the tale of two raids. One that happened but shouldn't have, the other that should have happened but didn't.
In August, the FBI — armed with a general warrant — seized 11,000 items from President Donald Trump’s not-so humble abode in Mar-a-Lago, knowing that he was in New York City at the time.
It was another abuse of power by the FBI — likely at the behest of Barack Hussein Obama again. He had ordered the FBI in 2016 to spy on The Donald. The FBI sent a Russian honeypot to Trump Tower in an attempt to justify the spying. After being turned down for a FISA warrant in June (a rarity) the FBI gained permission in October.
The Mar-a-Lago raid titillated the press. Their side was winning.
The Washington Post declared, “FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say.”
Nuclear documents!
The over-the-top hysteria by the Post had Matt Drudge — who in light of Twittergate likely also was on the FBI payroll — blathering about nuclear codes.
The Post said, “Material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive and usually restricted to a small number of government officials, experts said. Publicizing details about U.S. weapons could provide an intelligence road map to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering those systems. And other countries might view exposing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said.
“One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe would probably cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security.”
The hypocrisy was thicker than a liberal’s head. The Post cited anonymous sources while quoting David Laufman who investigated previous leaks. Given how rare leak prosecutions are, Laufman is either incompetent or in on the game.
At any rate, Laufman said, “If the FBI and the Department of Justice believed there were top-secret materials still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ motivation to recover that material as quickly as possible.”
Hair was on fire because the bureau was trying once again to discredit President Trump ahead of the election. The FBI confiscated everything that was not tied down. The press called the items documents, but they included the president’s passports, apparel, photographs and 1,693 newspapers, magazines and clippings.
I know. I counted them.
The FBI did not raid the president’s residence to retrieve nuclear codes or any other state secrets. Instead, the FBI took 11,000 items wanted by the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States — a bureaucracy created by FDR — to display presidential documents and other paraphernalia. At best, 100 of the documents — a mere 1% — were once classified. As president, Trump had the power to de-classify them and he did.
This was not a threat to national security. This was a bureaucratic busybody who took to the FBI her attempt to strip President Trump of his memorabilia.
The press made it seem like President Trump was a thief. The press engaged in speculation, not journalism.
After the raid, Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker wrote, “On Monday, F.B.I. agents searched the Florida home of former President Donald Trump, possibly commencing a new phase in the legal scrutiny that he has faced since leaving office. According to the Times, the search concerned classified material that Trump removed from the White House and took to Mar-a-Lago. What remains unclear is whether they found any information related to attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
“To understand what the search might signal, I spoke by phone with Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor and F.B.I. general counsel who worked on the Mueller investigation. He is currently in private practice and a professor at N.Y.U. School of Law. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Merrick Garland was almost certainly involved in the decision to order the search, what criteria the government uses for asking a judge for a warrant, and the quickening pace of the Department of Justice’s January 6th investigation.”
Five months later, none of the documents the FBI confiscated has been used in any prosecution.
The raid that should have happened was the one on Biden's library, his home and his son's garage.
Republicans own the House now and undoubtedly they will investigate Biden's abuse and likely sale of classified documents — real ones, not newspaper clippings.
But Republicans also must investigate the Raid on Mar-a-Lago because if the FBI can raid a president's home unmolested, then no one's home is safe in America.
***
Be sure to sign up for my Substack account.
