The raid on Donald Trump’s property in Mar-a-Lago was unprecedented. Never before had a former president been targeted in such a way — especially since it now appears Trump’s legal team was in talks with the Department of Justice as late as early June about any documents that may have been taken from the White House.
Trump had already turned over 15 boxes of documents, keepsakes, and mementos to the National Archives in January. Even if the Feds believed there were more documents, was an armed raid on the private residence of the front-running presidential candidate for the opposition party really necessary?
The answer is yes — if the goal was not to find any documents as much as it was to discredit, embarrass, and smear a likely opponent for the current occupant of the White House.
As much as the Democrats hate and loathe Donald Trump, they also fear his candidacy more than any other Republican. And if Biden decides not to run, Democrats would face a divisive, bloody primary season with no guarantee the candidate they choose would be electable. The far left would be willing to blow up the Democratic Party to nominate one of their own.
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NRO’s Andrew McCarthy believes the search of Mar-a-Lago was unrelated to the illegal retention of classified documents. He thinks the Feds were on a fishing expedition looking for evidence of crimes committed during the Capitol riot.
No former U.S. president has ever been indicted by the Justice Department. I do not believe the DOJ contemplates prosecuting a former president for mishandling classified information, much less purloining other government records. I especially doubt it when we are talking about a former president who could be the Republican candidate opposing the incumbent Democratic president in the next election. After all, the Obama/Biden administration did not charge Hillary Clinton with mishandling classified information, rationalizing that doing so would amount to a constitutionally offensive selective prosecution since such misconduct is often overlooked.
Still, regardless of whether the DOJ actually intends to prosecute a classified-information offense, mishandling classified information is still a federal crime. And a federal crime — any federal crime — can be the predicate for a U.S. court-authorized search warrant.
Using the possible retention of classified information as a smokescreen to find evidence that Donald Trump committed felonies relating to the riot at the Capitol building is probably unethical, but not illegal. Prosecutors apparently use this tactic frequently.
But it bears repeating that this is not an ordinary case. The case involves the essence of our democracy — something Democrats have been running around the country screaming that the Republicans are destroying. Charging a former president — a recent former president with a mammoth following — with felonies relating to his claims that the election was stolen will be seen as selective prosecution.
The Democratic base badly wants Trump to be charged with felonies. So does the House January 6 committee, heavily amplified by the media-Democrat complex. I am also quite sure that within the Justice Department, high-ranking officials are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland that the equities favor indicting Trump because he persists in the stolen-election claims — arguing that a successful prosecution would put these divisive claims to rest.
Nevertheless, Garland and his top advisers know it’s not that simple. If the Capitol riot had not happened, there would have been no thought of indicting Trump over the futile, half-baked “stop the steal” scheme. Because of the riot, the scheme is more condemnable, but the DOJ still can’t tie Trump to the riot. Meantime, if the DOJ were to charge Trump with anything less than a slam-dunk case, and especially on one that smacked of selective prosecution, there would be an eruption of protest. The Justice Department’s legitimacy, which hinges on the public’s acceptance of it as a non-partisan law-enforcer, would be at risk. If Garland is going to charge the former president, he has to be sure. He has to be able to convince the country that the public interest strongly favors prosecution.
Donald Trump is not above the law. But neither is he below the law. If the law means anything, it’s that all citizens — high-born and low — be treated equally. True, we often come up short of this goal. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bend every effort to realize it.
No matter what you think of Trump as a person, he deserves better from Merrick Garland and the Justice Department than a cynical attempt to perform an end run around the law to prosecute him for dubious reasons.
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