Mar-a-Lago raided
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George (not a Trump fan) Will: Garland has a political duty to explain the circus
As this is written Thursday, there are important unanswered questions about who instigated the search of Mar-a-Lago, and why. One remarkable aspect of this debacle, however, is that vigorous disgust need not wait until we know those answers: Try to imagine a justification for this flamboyant exercise of — what? law enforcement? What was important enough to bring to a rolling boil the already simmering suspicions of tens of millions of Americans about tentacles of the “deep state” engaging in partisan skulduggery?
This nation is running low on an indispensable ingredient of a successful society: trust, in institutions and one another. This week was another subtraction. Garland has said about the Justice Department, “We will and we must speak through our work.” Actually, his political duty is to explain and justify his work more thoroughly than he did in his minimalist statement Thursday afternoon.
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Kimberly Strassel is a bit less sanguine than Will.
Payback for Mar-a-Lago Will Be Brutal
In descending on Mar-a-Lago, the department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shifted the U.S. into the category of countries whose ruling parties use government power to investigate political rivals. No attorney general has ever signed off on a raid on a former president’s home, in what could be the groundwork for criminal charges.
Yet to read the left’s media scribes, Monday’s search was a ho-hum day in crime-fighting. The Beltway press circled the wagons around Attorney General Merrick Garland and primly parroted Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s piety that “no one is above the law.” “The Mar-a-Lago Raid Proves the U.S. Isn’t a Banana Republic,” pronounced the Atlantic, clearly worried readers might conclude the opposite. It is “bedrock principle” that those who “commit crimes” “must answer for them,” it lectured.
If anything, a perceived political persecution of Mr. Trump could help him to a second term. And he would be even more unrestrained as the 47th president than he was as the 45th. A second Trump administration wouldn’t have the caliber of grown-ups who signed up for the first tour. Mr. Garland’s raid has made even the highest political figures fair prosecutorial game, and the media’s new standard is that the department can’t be questioned as it goes about ensuring “no one is above the law.” Let’s see how that holds when a future Republican Justice Department starts raiding the homes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, James Comey and John Brennan.
Payback could come even sooner. Democrats set a new low with their Ukrainian impeachment circus, and a GOP House next year might be up for a reprise. Get ready for a few more select committees—perhaps excluding the minority party, as the Democrats effectively did with the Jan. 6 committee—to investigate Mr. Garland’s politicized department or Hunter Biden’s finances. Watch them subpoena sitting Democratic representatives, as the Jan. 6 committee did to Republicans. Reps. Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell may find themselves on the back bench with a new Republican majority eager to follow Mrs. Pelosi’s example and strip the opposing team’s members of committee assignments.
All this tit for tat will further undermine our institutions and polarize the nation—but such is the nature of retributive politics. Which is why the wholesale Democratic and media defense of this week’s events is so reckless. Both parties long understood that political restraint was less about civility than self-preservation. What goes around always comes around. What went around this week will come around hard.
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To me “getting it” is realizing you should wait until the facts are out before rendering these judgements. What she is expressing is some sort of tribal faith.
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@jon-nyc said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
What she is expressing is some sort of tribal faith.
Yes.
And the names that she mentions (Swallwell, for example) should be forthright to stand up to the same scrutiny.
That's a "standard" that Garland reiterated yesterday. "No one..."
So, shall we talk about Swallwell's laptop and Fang Fang? How about the First Son's lying on a firearm application (a felony)?
If you turn a blind eye to those, it's pretty - tribal.
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Yes, but in a getting it-ish sort of way. What with the FBI "descending on" Mar-a-Lago like a horde of vampires and all. So much more effecting to read something that leaves your heart thrilling with virtue signalling flavored with rage and hate.
Don't need no stinkin facts, gringo!
Don't know how we're ever going to dial back on these partisan-fueled wars which, not for nuttin, have been greatly exacerbated by Trump's manipulation of the socials.
Chickens are coming home to roost, Donald!
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
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@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Because it was unprecedented and because so many have tried to get him so many ways.
But your answer would have been the same if it hadn't been unprecedented!
Sorry, I've redd all the posts on this, and it's like y'all are bound and determined to believe what you need to believe, even if you have to corkscrew yourselves to do it. As if two seconds after news of the service emerged, the latest-maneuver-to-get-Trump theory was solidly in place.
I don't have a problem seeing it far more simply. NARA had reason to believe Trump had removed and retained documents he shouldn't have when he left office. They attempted to get them back without success, and being worried about the nature of the documents' contents, appealed to DOJ, who says "Where possible it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search," and when those means weren't successful they were left with no choice but the warrant.
IOW, it was Trump who initiated this whole thing by removing documents he shouldn't have. The feds petitioned him to return them without success, and were left with no choice but the search warrant, because they could not afford to leave documents of unknown content floating around unsecured. It seems like the feds gave him a lot of latitude in this, and he has persisted in not cooperating.
I admit I'm not confident in my understanding of this whole thing, but I just can't make it make sense that the warrant is an effort to "get" him. I don't see that Trump left them any choice.
I'm not beating a drum to champion any one line of reasoning. I'm just trying to understand what's going on.
No, you are wrong here. I'm not defending Trump in any way. I'm completely willing to withhold any judgement as to the correctness of the warrant until we see what specifically it was about. I suspect he brought it on himself, as he is wont to do.
My criticism is that the public has been kept in the dark and that he and his supporters could very predictably be counted on to gin up outrage and probably mistaken assumptions that improve his chances in 2024. It may in fact have been deliberate on his part to launch his campaign. All that could have been avoided by simply stating what they were after and why from the start.
"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
No, you are wrong here. I'm not defending Trump in any way. I'm completely willing to withhold any judgement as to the correctness of the warrant until we see what specifically it was about.
I'm very happy -- and unsurprised -- to hear that.
My criticism is that the public has been kept in the dark and that he and his supporters could very predictably be counted on to gin up outrage and probably mistaken assumptions that improve his chances in 2024. It may in fact have been deliberate on his part to launch his campaign. All that could have been avoided by simply stating what they were after and why from the start.
I can't answer this, because I don't know to what extent NARA (or whoever) did or didn't keep the public apprised. If it was all surreptitious, then boo hiss on them for playing into Trump's hands.
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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Can we all pause and appreciate how perfect of a news event this was for TNCR back and forth fodder?
I’ve been at the lake all week so I’m just checking in here and there. Can anyone catch me up? All I am aware of is Horace used a derogatory homo word and a horse collapsed in NYC. Anything else major?
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
@Jolly said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
Bias, much?
Might as well. It's not like I can get y'all to respond to my unbiased questions designed to sort out the facts. Quel boring, eh?
And an accusation of bias coming from you is hilarious.
I admit bias, you don't. Pretty simple, huh?
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Catseye3 said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
@Mik said in Mar-a-Lago raided:
No, you are wrong here. I'm not defending Trump in any way. I'm completely willing to withhold any judgement as to the correctness of the warrant until we see what specifically it was about.
I'm very happy -- and unsurprised -- to hear that.
My criticism is that the public has been kept in the dark and that he and his supporters could very predictably be counted on to gin up outrage and probably mistaken assumptions that improve his chances in 2024. It may in fact have been deliberate on his part to launch his campaign. All that could have been avoided by simply stating what they were after and why from the start.
I can't answer this, because I don't know to what extent NARA (or whoever) did or didn't keep the public apprised. If it was all surreptitious, then boo hiss on them for playing into Trump's hands.
Educate yourself.
At its base, this becomes a common Executive documents/National archive story. It happened with Obama, which is maybe why Trump tightened the law. Also happened with Clinton and with Bush.
Where this story deviates, hinges on two unassailable facts:
- The Trump hate that exists within a certain echelon of the Justice and certainly exits in the Whitehouse. And the hate Trump has for them. At least I know Trump has good reason.
This propelled the raid.
- The fact that this was a raid, no matter how the Left tries to spin it. So what, if a former POTUS is fighting a subpoena for records? The President has the right to declassify his documents and the fight may be whether the documents have been declassified.
Here this goes off the rails, is a nighttime raid by 30 agents, planned for when Trump was not at home. This could have easily been done by four agents in a van, during normal business hours. No need for the theater, except to send the message...The same message they sent at Stone's home, when they showed up with a SWAT team and a CNN news crew to arrest an elderly man who was not a flight risk.
As Will wrote - and he has a nice amount of Trump hate flowing through his veins - this simply is not done, if you wish to have a functioning society. These are the tactics of a banana republic and anybody who doesn't think the other side will retaliate in kind is a moron.
The gentleman who will most likely be the next Speaker, has already told Garland to keep all of his notes and communications and clear his calendar. I wouldn't be surprised if they impeach him (although that may be over the Border).
Y'all may enjoy the nightly histrionics on PMSNBC or CNN, but this ain't no way to run a country.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion.
