The FBI Raids Donald Trump

The DOJ makes a move on the former president, at long last

I turned on the television today and was very pleasantly surprised to see the blaring headline splashed on CNN: FBI EXECUTES SEARCH WARRANT AT TRUMP’S MAR-A-LAGO. It seems a phalanx of federal agents raided Donald Trump’s garish Florida abode early this morning, even breaking into his personal safe, hitting him where it hurts.

The former president was not present at the time of the raid, and he immediately and predictably condemned the move as politically motivated, comparing the move to Watergate, casting himself as a victim of perfidious Democrats, and a shadowy “deep-state.”

Still, we know a federal judge must have signed this search warrant based on probable cause indicating serious wrongdoing. In other words, the feds aren’t raiding a former president’s home lightly, without evidence that a crime has been committed.

This is a profoundly big deal. It may prove to be a turning point in the battle between the rule of law and the impunity of a criminal president in the United States of America. At a bare minimum, it’s a major escalation by the Department of Justice in the investigation into Donald Trump.

This indicates that the prosecutors over at Main Justice, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, are finally warming up to the idea of prosecuting the man who launched a violent insurrection to keep himself in power, and who appears to be ready to tear the United States apart with yet another presidential candidacy.

There are currently two ongoing federal investigations into Donald Trump, the first into the botched coup that culminated in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and the second about his routine and egregious mishandling of classified national security documents and records.

Apparently, this raid was in relation to the latter, and federal agents seized 15 boxes of material out of his home, an ominous sign for Trump.

That’s quite interesting, considering new photographs of torn documents with what appears to be the former president’s signature sharpie scrawl sitting in a toilet bowl, published in a story by Axios earlier today.

In any case, this is a major groundbreaking development, signaling a new level of seriousness at the Department of Justice into the rash of criminality and wrongdoing committed by Donald Trump during his presidency. It’s an unprecedented move by an exceedingly cautious Attorney General, and it may herald even more serious moves in the near future, to include a criminal indictment and prosecution of a former American leader.

It doesn’t get any more serious than that, especially considering that leader will likely be running for office again as a way to insulate himself from criminal prosecution, as he recently told his aides he would do.

The martyr

For his part, Donald Trump was simply unable to resist using this moment to cast himself as a martyr to score political points. He released a lengthy statement today during the course of the raid: “My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”

The White House apparently did not know about the raid beforehand, and they seemed to have been blindsided by the news. This jibes with the DOJ’s larger campaign to reinstate the Department of Justice’s independence, and their efforts to maintain distance from politics and the White House, after four years of Trump pressuring his attorney general, Bill Barr, into doing his political bidding.

In any case, the January 6 hearings appear to have had their desired effect.

They showed the country the scope and breadth of Donald Trump’s many crimes, in microscopic detail and with crucial eyewitnesses offering insider testimony. It was an effort to pressure the Department of Justice to go after Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election, and instigating the violent coup that resulted. It was an effort to retake the narrative, and combat Trump’s lies and conspiracy.

More to the point, it was an effort to reimpose the rule of law on a rogue former president who was still tearing the country into shreds.

It seems that pressure campaign was effective tonight, as the United States begins to digest the unprecedented news of a former president being targeted by a government he once led. The political and legal ramifications of this move are only beginning.

Already, Republicans are loudly protesting the move, and circling the wagons around the former president. When I tuned into Fox News they were eagerly discussing the “weaponization of the national security state” to attack Republicans.

Joe Kent, a radicalized congressional candidate from Washington State put it plainly, “We must realize we’re at war.”

Indeed, this raid may presage a turbulent new era in the United States of America; while a criminal investigation and indictment of Donald Trump is an absolute necessity after the violent coup he instigated, it doesn’t necessarily spell healing for a nation riven by distrust, poisoned by lies.

With Fox News and its fellow travelers working overtime to convince Americans to believe Donald Trump’s tales of persecution, and his lies about a stolen 2020 election, this country is in the grips of a political disorder that will be difficult to shake.

Tonight’s the beginning of a national reckoning that’s been long overdue, after a rampaging president ran roughshod over every political norm, and legal prohibition, until he inevitably launched a coup to keep himself in power, and render himself dictator in the world’s oldest modern democracy.

One can only hope it is successful. With the country as bitterly divided as ever, and with much of its population utterly radicalized, repairing the damage done is a tall task indeed.

Still, this is as much a hopeful moment as it is perilous. This United States cannot hope to heal without justice, without real accountability, and without the rule of law prevailing over flagrant criminality.

This raid marks the beginning of that process. Every American interested in maintaining our fragile democracy should hope to see it succeed. Still, there have been long years of indoctrination and radicalization on America’s political right, and that won’t be easily undone.