By Jim McCraw

Whether he will be prosecuted for it or not, it is a simple fact that, if there had not been a number of classified documents still inside Mar-A-Lago after repeated attempts by federal authorities to return them to the National Archives, it would not have been necessary for the FBI to serve the search warrant and execute the search of the former president’s mansion on Monday.

A simple fact the Trump people resolutely refuse to understand has turned into loud accusations of political persecution. “Persecution” of a man who has been flouting the law since college, told more than 20,000 lies while in office, was impeached twice, lost big in 2020, told The Big Lie about the election, and fomented the January 6th attack on the Capitol, continues to evade and flout the law, but is still somehow a great guy who deserves another chance to run the country.

The right has accused the Biden administration of another witch hunt, while the White House says it has been completely unaware of the timing of execution of the warrant. The White House would have not scheduled Biden’s signing of the CHIPS Act on the same day it would be overshadowed by the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago. 

That wasn’t enough to keep the right from bleating instantly about a witch hunt, persecution, and “weaponizing” of the Justice Department. The FBI serves warrants on private citizens in all kinds of federal investigations every day. Donald J. Trump is a private citizen with Secret Service protection, but a private citizen, nevertheless, who had access to classified documents and information for four years and illegally retained some of those documents, contents unknown, which are the property of the American people, not Donald Trump. That’s as much as we know about the FBI affidavit or the search warrant. The documents were there, and they were taken away. Trump’s lawyers have an invoice of items removed from Mar-a-Lago, and they have the right to release that invoice to the public.

For legal actions, warrants and searches involving a former president to even happen in the first place requires very, very careful sequential steps by the DOJ, the FBI, local police, and of course, the Secret Service, which was duly informed prior to the early morning visit to Mar-a-Lago.  The documents were there, illegally, and the FBI took them away.

•••

View from the Left

And so the hard-right continues to lambast the FBI and Justice Department for Monday’s FBI seizure of 12 boxes of documents that belong to the federal government from Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. The MAGA-right are listening to the conspiracy social media-right, insisting that the ex-president continues to be mistreated, continues to be the victim of a deep-state witch hunt. This could mean another civil war.

Some even suggest that perhaps the FBI planted those dozen banker’s boxes full of papers found in Mar-a-Lago’s basement. Conversely, The Wall Street Journal reports that it appears to be a Trump insider who tipped off the Justice Department that Trump failed to return all the boxes they had demanded be returned months ago.

Our estimable pundit-at-large, Stephen Macaulay, weighs in on all this on the other side of this page, in the right column. Spoiler alert: Macaulay is, once again not the least bit sympathetic toward Trump. What is Macaulay doing in the right column, you ask? He has always leaned right as a conservative in the traditional sense of the adjective and would consider authoritarian populists like the ex-president to be the true RINOs.

Whether your politics are to the right or left of Stephen Macaulay, you are invited to tell us what you think in the Comments box in this column or in the one on the right, or to email editors@thehustings.news. You’re even invited to defend Donald J. Trump if that’s your thing. Please be civil in your comments, and please avoid false or misleading statements. Your comments may be edited for length or clarity, though not for point of view.

--TL

_____