Merrick Garland Is Not The Victim Here
One thing is for certain: it’s a political hit, but Trump isn’t the only rhetorical casualty — the other is the remnant of faith that Americans had in our institutions.
The Attorney General gave a five minute statement and didn’t take questions earlier this afternoon about his role in the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Which contradicts the earlier “sources” in the piece from Newsweek.
Garland remarked that it "is standard to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search."
This isn’t the first time previous presidents had issues with the National Archives but it is the first time anyone was so politically petty and agenda-driven that they’d abuse their authority and raid a former president’s house for it with the hopes of finding something, anything else.
This was nothing more than a sloppy fishing expedition under the guise of “classified docs” for anything actionable on January 6th. They’ve come up empty-handed after all of their theatrics and need to show their irrational base that they’re still on the case, whatever the case is now. That Garland requested the court unseal the warrant indicates they’ve got nothing, that it was about “classified documents,” see? Nothing to see here! — except that it was already reported at the start of this year that Trump had spoken with the feds about documents for the National Archives. They cordially met their lawyers at Mar-a-Lago where 15 boxes were retrieved from storage. Garland offered no explanation as to what made it impossible for them to use “less intrusive” means this time.
Garland was indignant over criticism of FBI behavior:
Like Kevin Clinesmith? Peter Strzok? Lisa Paige? Andrew McCabe? James Comey? The whistleblowers accusing the bureau of suppressing information about the investigation into Hunter Biden for the benefit of his dad’s campaign? Clinesmith got a wrist slap for doctoring CIA emails to use as probable cause for surveilling one of their assets.
Garland wants the public to see him as the victim and Trump as the aggressor and undo public perception of Trump as the perpetual outsider fighting the “deep state” — but this is damage control done too late. Trump is surging again in the polls because the FBI thought they could pull off a raid while Trump was out of town and beat him to the punch in the press.
Asking the court to unseal the warrant was the least the DOJ could do in clarifying this mess, which is why this is a dumb take:
As I said, it sounds like they have nothing, used the “classified docs” as pretext to look for something else, and were unsuccessful. That’s not an “own.” I love how these people try to set up every scenario: “Trump should release the warrant if he’s got nothing to fear” — except he apparently didn’t have it and it was sealed, meaning it takes a court order to unseal it.
The feds were supposed to keep this aid-ray (that’s Pig Latin for you non-code speakers) on the down low, meaning they didn’t tip off CNN beforehand, like they did with Roger Stone:
The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI's deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump's Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away.
FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.
The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. "What a spectacular backfire," says the Justice official.
We’re expected to believe that time was of the essence! for the feds to get into Mar-a-Lago and get these documents before Trump could destroy them — except he wasn’t there and they had already been welcomed into Mar-a-Lago and shown what and where the records were located.
“Anything you need, let us know,” Trump had said.
I said on my radio program the day after the raid that the warrant is the Rosetta Stone. Until it’s unsealed it’s all speculation. Based on everything reported, if Garland chooses to indict Trump over something related to the Presidential Records Act, he’s going to have a helluva time explaining why Trump, why now, when predecessors have run afoul of the same.
Trump responded to Garland, calling the whole thing a “witch hunt.”
Let me speculate a moment: Who does this benefit? In Washington, figuring out who’s behind a political hit is an Occam’s Razor-sort-of answer. Democrats are repeatedly surveyed and they don’t want a Biden 2024 campaign or presidency — but they’ll only go with him if the GOP nominee is Trump as he’s the only Democrat competitive with 45. It seems an incredibly stupid, risky, Rube Goldberg-esque move to secure your party’s nomination by unifying the entire GOP, a bunch of civil libertarians, and some moderate Democrats around your potential opponent to force your party’s hand — but this is Biden and he once said that Hunter was “the smartest person I know,” so maybe this stunt was Hunter’s idea, who knows.
It could also just be Democrats doing their thing, getting too far over their skis and falling all over their own strategy as they tend to do.
One thing is for certain: it’s a political hit, but Trump isn’t the only rhetorical casualty — the other is the remnant of faith that Americans had in our institutions.
Thea weaponizing of the DOJ and IRS by this admin and the Obama admin are beyond frightening.
What is Herr Himmler going to do next?