FBI Trump Raid
What was this about? Who wins? Who loses?
I rarely send this out more than once a week, but the raid on Trump’s Florida home at Mar-a-Lago is a huge story and will have implications legally and politically for years to come and especially in November. There are many issues here to cover. I’ll be as brief as possible and get to my conclusions as quickly as possible.
As you likely know at this reading, Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was raided by the FBI in search of documents being held there. It is reported that this was a search for classified material being held in violation of the law under the Presidential Records Act. Former Presidents’ records are held under the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as a matter of law. The raid reportedly came as part of an ongoing investigation. Here are some facts we know for now.
This is not a new subject. It has been an ongoing issue since Trump left office. It’s just been weaponized now. Cong. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made a request of NARA back in February about “15 boxes” of information Trump reportedly took with him after leaving office. NARA responded thus saying they were working with Trump and his legal team.
NARA found classified records nearly a year ago and then and reported this to the Department of Justice (DOJ)
It was reported by the New York Times that a Grand Jury investigation was triggered because of those documents.
But what’s really going on here?
NARA already had these records. What prompted this unprecedented raid on a former sitting President and potential future nominee? One might suppose the FBI is completing its investigation. But that doesn’t make sense for a few reasons:
NARA already had the records beforehand. What else do they need?
This seems like it might be a fishing expedition. You’ll recall in my last email that in a CBS News interview, Former AG Bill Barr noted the difficulty DOJ would have getting past Executive Privilege in their Jan. 6 investigation. Well, they just formed their criminal pretext.
Law Professor Jonathan Turley mentioned on FoxNews last night that the Presidential Records Act has never been used to charge for criminal intent.
This is just another major event in the ongoing, six-year, deep-state scam.
In my opinion, this is surely not the first time there has been some form of benign mishandling of documents as a President leaves office. What prompted the criminal warrant here? Not justice. This was clearly a pretext in part to advance the Jan. 6 political witch hunt and break through the wall of Executive Privilege as far as possible. There are other reasons as well. But Executive Privilege is a major obstacle for those wanting to drag Trump administration officials through criminal court.
Would this disqualify Trump from running for President?
We already went though this when Hillary Clinton was found to have used a private server to host her emails in violation of the same laws used to gain this warrant. At the time, it was rightly made clear that the Constitution alone lays out the qualifications for becoming President.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
That’s it. The qualifications are unambiguous. But you will hear many on the Left and in the media trying to say Trump is disqualified because misuse of records is a crime.
Have we already forgotten all the times even worse abuses of the Presidential Records Act were ignored?
Let’s repeat from above. Hillary Clinton hired a private computer company to house a computer server (in their bathroom we are told!) in Denver to allow her to get around these laws. She conducted public business using this private email. And she permanently deleted over 30,000 emails shielding them from investigators. After subsequent work to retrieve some of those emails from recipients of her communications, it was discovered that she had classified information on that email server. Yet not criminal charges were brought against her. And and the FBI never raided her home to get materials to confirm any investigation.
You might have forgotten another incident of the misuse of classified records related to the Clintons. Former Bill Clinton administration lawyer Sandy Berger was stealing and destroying classified records in 2003 while he was “doing research” on behalf of B?ill Clinton for a legal case. It was one of the most hilarious cases of a bungled theft operation. Burger hid files at a downtown DC location on his way out of the National Archives building and came back to retrieve them later. Berger denied stealing the documents at first. But he later admitted to it. No criminal charges were brought against him. He was fined $50,000 in 2005.
And then there’s James Comey. Not only did he admit publicly that he took classified records with him after leaving the FBI which he gave to a reporter. He had other classified documents in his possession as well.
NOT ONE OF THESE CASES PROMPTED A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
What happens from here?
November is gonna be interesting!
This was a major miscalculation on the part of the FBI. They just confirmed again that this is a political witch-hunt. Don’t underestimate how this may backfire in November. Though Democrats are grasping for ways to keep Republicans from taking back control of Congress, the Jan. 6 hearings and this incident in particular have the potential to create a backlash at the polls on November 1st. Republicans are already in an uproar and rightly so. There have now been six years of investigations of Donald Trump. It’s surprising to me that none of them have turned up even a scintilla of anything that could be made out to be a criminal act by Trump. He’s totally clean after this massive anal exam after every attempt to turn anything into a possible crime.
Donald Trump is running in 2024, and he’ll be elected if he does
Donald Trump is running in 2024. Democrats know this is a huge problem for them as they have no one who can make a serious challenge to The Donald. There are detractors. Bill Barr said over the weekend “The day [Donald Trump is] elected, he’ll be a 78-year-old lame duck who's obviously bent on revenge more than anything else.” I don’t agree with Barr that revenge will be the only activity in a future Trump White House. But he makes a fair point. I’ll get lots of flack for saying I don’t believe Barr has particular animus against Donald Trump. I also don’t believe he has betrayed Trump. He’s just ready to move on, and I cannot fault his analysis. But, I’m not ready to move on. And it would be a gleeful pleasure to see how Democrats are made fools of again if Trump becomes President.
Republicans are still heading toward huge wins in 2022
If Republicans are stupid (and I am far from ruling that out after years of experience) and don’t take advantage of this to win in November, they will have lost the best opportunity they’ve ever had to finally bring this country back toward its Constitutional moorings. I’m sticking to my prediction of a 60 to 75 seat swing toward the GOP in November.