Trump, Fox and The GOP Spin Lies Following the FBI Search Warrant

Many in the mainstream media - typically the same ones who for years have engaged in false equivalency and a pretense that the GOP has not perversely changed - are breathless in the wake of the FBI execution of a search warrant against Doanld Trup at Mar-A-Lago, seemingly searching for stolen federal documents (some thought to be top secret) removed from the White House in violation of federal statutes.  Yes, the action was unprecedented but so to has been Trump's corruption and lawlessness so comparisons to other former presidents is a comparison of apples and organges.   Meanwhile, Trump is doing what Trump always does: LYING.  Sadly, the political whore that now fill almost all of the ranks of today's GOP are acting as an echo chamber, fearful of both Trump's wrath and the wratth of the vever more hideous GOP party base.  The facts and the process needed tom secure such a warrant are ignored both by those in the GOP rushing to give Trump his demanded politico fellatio and the faint hearted in the media who would not recognize responsible and courageous journalism if it beat them about the head.  These cowards also ignore the reality that if the rule of law is to survive, it must be demonstrated that no one is above the law.  No one, not even Trump.  Pieces at The Atlantic and CNN look at the truth behind the FBI search and that this is anything but a weaponization of the Justice Department or politically motivated.   First this from the CNN piece authored by former prosecutors:

The search warrant executed on former President Donald Trump's premises at Mar-a-Lago represents a seismic shift in the overall landscape of the investigations against him. We have long forecast his deepening legal peril, but this puts an exclamation point on his exposure. As a nation, we are now rapidly headed into barely charted waters.

Trump reacted with predictable outrage, claiming that his home was "under siege, raided, and occupied" and that "Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before."

He's correct on that last point. But we have never seen evidence of this kind of behavior by a president before either. CNN is reporting that the focus of the search warrant is on documents that Trump removed from the White House, including some 15 boxes of materials that have now been recovered. These materials reportedly included classified documents. 

As former prosecutors and defense attorneys, we know that, to conduct this court-ordered search, the government would have had to go through a demanding process of establishing probable cause that an offense had occurred. The search warrant materials would have had to be approved at multiple senior levels of the FBI and DOJ. Given the profile of the target, we have little doubt that Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and likely Attorney General Merrick Garland would have been briefed. 

But that is not the end of the process. A district court judge or federal magistrate had to independently review the supporting affidavit and make a finding of probable cause to believe that evidence, fruits or instrumentalities of a crime would be found on Trump's premises. 

While the reported basis of the search warrant related to the removal or misdhandling of official documents, that does not mean that those potential offenses are the only ones that prosecutors are looking at. . . . . even before Monday's seizure of the documents, Trump's lawyers were in communication with DOJ officials, according to CNN sources, to discuss assertions of executive privilege. That seems unlikely to relate only (if at all) to Trump's mishandling or removal of official documents. Instead, it signals a sharp interest in issues like the false electoral slates that give rise to the likely crimes of conspiracy to defraud and obstruction of congress. 

If some thought he [AG Garland] was moving slower than they would have liked, he's now clearly moving faster than we all expected. If you believe that no one is above the law, and that the powerful and the powerless should be treated the same in the face of probable cause of crime, the new pace of Garland's investigation is profoundly reassuring.

Of course, today's Republican Party no longer believes in the rule of law or, sadly in democracy, if it threatens GOP control.  The party likelise no longer belives that the views and desires of the majority of Americans matters be it on matters of abortion, voting rights and a host of other issues.   Hence, it is little surprise that Republicans quickly begans shouting out lies and threats merely to stay in the good graces of the ugly party base.  This from The Atlantic:

The merits of a potential government case against Donald Trump, and of the basis for the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, cannot yet be evaluated, despite the assertions of many of Trump’s supporters and critics. A federal search warrant can be obtained only with probable cause and with the approval of a federal magistrate . . . . . the reflexive Republican insistence that the investigation is politically motivated is itself unmoored from the available evidence.

On Fox News, pundits warned of a “preemptive coup,” proclaimed a “dark day for the republic,” and compared the FBI to “the gestapo.” Other conservative-media figures grimly suggested that political violence was imminent, while a few right-wing intellectuals tweeted menacingly in the same tone that a mid-level functionary on the Death Star uses right before he gets choked out by Darth Vader. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced that the FBI was in a “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and threatened to investigate if Republicans take back Congress in the midterms.

[T]he certainty that Trump is being politically persecuted cannot be supported by evidence. It is instead based on ideology: There are people against whom law-enforcement action or abuse is always justified, and there are people against whom it can never be justified. That is, if law-enforcement officials want to murder an unarmed Black man in the street, brutalize protesters against police misconduct, or investigate a Democratic presidential candidate, conservatives will insist that such officers are infallible and that any criticism of their conduct is outrageous. But when the law is used to investigate or restrict the conduct of people deemed by conservatives to be above its prohibitions, that is axiomatically an abuse of power.

This is why, for example, it was perfectly permissible for Trump to order his attorney general to prosecute his political opponents, to even campaign on that basis, but it is intolerable politicization for him to be investigated, regardless of the basis. . . . . Law enforcement is legitimate and deserving of unconditional support only as long as it enforces the law against groups conservatives want it to target and exempts those they do not.

Ironically, Trump has continually received favorable treatment from the FBI. . . . conservatives believe that the law does not apply to Trump. (The centrist version of this argument is that any politician with sufficient political support becomes an unaccountable caudillo who possesses legal immunity, a position that mocks the bedrock democratic principle of political equality.)

Trump himself publicly encouraged cops to physically assault those in their custody, while his administration abandoned any pretense of federal oversight of police misconduct. Ultimately, conservatives believe this unfairness in the justice system to be a virtue, as long as they are never on its losing end.

The Trump supporters outraged about the Mar-a-Lago raid are not lamenting that those protections have been curtailed. They simply believe that Trump should not be subject to the law at all. Political systems with such exemptions exist, but democracy is not one of them.