FBI Raids Mar-a-Lago: What Does it Mean?

Election denial.
Several losers in close presidential races have denied their loss. (Both sides). But when Trump says it, he’s a danger to democracy.

There was significant weird stuff with absentee ballots last time. I know some of you wanted Trump to lose, and I think that’s tainted your view of the election. (And I accept that mine has a reciprocal taint.)

Records [about nuclear secrets]
When it’s suggested that there were documents about nuclear secrets, people here post, “I’d believe it with Trump,” and, “Yah, that’s bad,” and, “Oh, Trump is saying planted evidence-sounds about right for Trump.”

??? This just sounds wrong to me on a few levels. Nuclear secrets are just laying around the White House waiting for an outgoing president to pack up?
And what could possibly be the motive for keeping nuclear secrets? I get the Clinton’s stealing of china. That would be a nice thing to have later. Do you guys imagine Trump have a nostalgic reread of nuclear secrets?

[T Howard]

Of course, a handful of Supreme Court picks makes up for it all, doesn’t it?

Do Trump’s 3 Supreme Court justices make up for 4 years of “his complete lack of character?”

Just the SCOTUS decisions we have gotten in the 1.5 years will have lasting impact for years, maybe decades. The Roe v. Wade decision alone could save thousands of lives (maybe many more). That one would not have been possible without Trump’s picks. (Sure, they were vetted by others, but without his nominating them, their confirmation would have been impossible.)

Assuming the Lord tarries, those justices could sit 30 years more or so, and the positive effect they will have on this country could last long beyond Trump. This isn’t much different from the complete lack of character of many of the Judges still leaving Israel at peace for many years at a time. So yeah, even if there were no other positive impacts of the Trump administration (like the Abraham accords), I’d say the justices alone are worth it.

I’d make that trade any time vs. what we have now. I don’t have to love Trump or his character (and I don’t) to see that we are seeing positive lasting impacts from his having been elected. The additional exposure of just how much the left (as well as supposedly objective institutions like the press) despises those not in their camp is just an added bonus.

What I’m hearing on this thread is a lot of unproven rhetoric.

I am no fan of Trump and hope he isn’t in the running in 2024. Overall, I think his negatives outweigh any positives he brings, though I understand why people are attracted to the positives.

He could release the warrant himself, but from what I’ve read about it, the actual warrant tells nothing. What he wouldn’t have and what would give light on the whole matter is the affidavit the govt submitted alleging a crime or strong potential of a crime. That would tell you what the judge who granted the warrant ruled on. The warrant itself doesn’t tell much.

The big issue in this situation is using the FBI against a political opponent. Maybe that’s not what it is, but given the political aspect, it is natural to question whether or not it is a purely political move. Until we know more, we can’t know the answer to that question.

I can’t see how demanding the government make this clear translates into support for Trump. No one should want the FBI to become a political arm of whoever is in power.

[Don Johnson]

The big issue in this situation is using the FBI against a political opponent. Maybe that’s not what it is, but given the political aspect, it is natural to question whether or not it is a purely political move. Until we know more, we can’t know the answer to that question.

I can’t see how demanding the government make this clear translates into support for Trump. No one should want the FBI to become a political arm of whoever is in power.

Who is using the FBI against a political opponent? Whether it is true or not, Biden has stated he didn’t know anything about it. (https://www.newsweek.com/did-biden-know-about-fbi-search-trumps-mar-lag…)

It was actually the Department of Justice that used the FBI to execute the search warrant. This is now the third time that the FBI has seized records. Some were at the behest of bipartisan groups (i.e National Archive).

The government makes this clear in two ways (and this is typically why the Justice Department is silent on all these types of activies). First, is that they don’t pursue anything after the raid. The reason the Justice Department doesn’t announce anything in ongoing investigations is so that they don’t hurt the character of the individual. They get information, the fill out a warrant, they go before a judge who must give them permission and they execute the warrant. Many times the execution doesn’t reveal anything and therefore nothing is further pursued. Second, they find something. If and when they do, they put a case together and present it in court where the justice system works to ensure fair hearings and results. There they either win or loose the case.

Just because a search warrant is executed doesn’t mean that anything comes out of it, so it is hard to understand how it is politicized. If they do find something and they take it to court, the legal framework and Trump’s peers will examine the evidence to determine the outcome. I am not sure the Rule of Law and Trump’s peers are politicized or not.

I would assume the government will do nothing or it will do something. Either way, in time, clarity will be made. Just as it was in Clinton’s email investigation.

[dgszweda]

Don Johnson wrote:

The big issue in this situation is using the FBI against a political opponent. Maybe that’s not what it is, but given the political aspect, it is natural to question whether or not it is a purely political move. Until we know more, we can’t know the answer to that question.

I can’t see how demanding the government make this clear translates into support for Trump. No one should want the FBI to become a political arm of whoever is in power.

Who is using the FBI against a political opponent? Whether it is true or not, Biden has stated he didn’t know anything about it. (https://www.newsweek.com/did-biden-know-about-fbi-search-trumps-mar-lago…)

It was actually the Department of Justice that used the FBI to execute the search warrant.

Who runs the Department of Justice? Merrick Garland, who has publicly stated he authorized the search warrant. He talks to Joe Biden every day. Do you believe Joe never heard of it until afterwards? (I can believe he didn’t remember hearing of it.)

[dgszweda] Just because a search warrant is executed doesn’t mean that anything comes out of it, so it is hard to understand how it is politicized.

Again, Andy McCarthy, former prosecutor says:

For the Justice Department to obtain a search warrant, it needs a crime.

The point of a search warrant is that it is highly probable that a crime occurred or is about to occur and material evidence is at the search location.

You can’t just get a search warrant because you think something is fishy.

[dcbii]

I’d make that trade any time vs. what we have now. I don’t have to love Trump or his character (and I don’t) to see that we are seeing positive lasting impacts from his having been elected. The additional exposure of just how much the left (as well as supposedly objective institutions like the press) despises those not in their camp is just an added bonus.

Dave, with all due respect, I believe this perspective is very short sighted.

What you’re not accounting for is the damage Trump has done to American democracy and to our democratic institutions, the damage Trump has done to the republican party, and the idolatry Trump has caused (or maybe just exposed!) in the American evangelical church.

If repubs want to lose bigly in 2024, just renominate Trump for president. The country, the republican party, and the church need to give Trump the boot for good.

[T Howard]

Dave, with all due respect, I believe this perspective is very short sighted.

What you’re not accounting for is the damage Trump has done to American democracy and to our democratic institutions, the damage Trump has done to the republican party, and the idolatry Trump has caused (or maybe just exposed!) in the American evangelical church.

If repubs want to lose bigly in 2024, just renominate Trump for president. The country, the republican party, and the church need to give Trump the boot for good.

Your assessment is fair, even if I don’t agree. My own pastor is probably closer to your views on Trump than on mine. I’m willing to go my own way on this, as I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking, praying, and discussing this with others, not to mention forming my political views over the decades since Reagan was elected (the first president I could vote for).

I don’t doubt that there are “Trump” churches, but as I have mentioned before, I’m not part of those circles, and I don’t encounter it in my own church (which keeps all politics out of the pulpit) or in other local churches we are associated with. Like I suspect you do, I think politics should be kept out of the church, and we don’t make idols out of political figures.

I’ve already posted on one of the other threads that I want to see someone like DeSantis instead of Trump run in 2024, and I sincerely hope that happens. That’s how I’ll be voting in the 2024 primaries (as I did in 2016). Should Trump be the eventual Republican nominee, however, having seen the damage to our country in only 1.5 years, I’d almost consider campaigning for him over having a repeat of Biden, or worse, someone who has all of his/her marbles like Harris, Buttigieg, or Newsom. I would most definitely vote for him again in that circumstance.

I’m hoping and praying I don’t have to make that choice. 2 years is a long time to wait and see what will happen.

From the beginning with Trump, I had my fears, though I did vote for him (OK, really against his opponents) twice. The key of that was his character, combined with the fact that he’d somehow prospered greatly in Gotham when that fair city was significantly controlled by the Mob. OK, what’s going on under the waterline there? I really don’t know.

But that said, I don’t know whether it’s worse that Trump does things in a societally unacceptable way, or that Obama and Biden appear to have weaponized federal agencies against their political opposition in a societally acceptable way—i.e. no mean tweets. With the former, if you throw Trump out on his rear end, normalcy basically returns. But with the weaponization of the bureaucracies against half the nations, you cannot do that. Undoing that becomes like urban warfare.

Long and short of it is that we’re in deep, deep trouble as a nation.

IF:

It is the extreme danger that he presents to our democracy. He doesn’t want to be beholden to the Constitution, he wants to remake government into his own image and he would prefer to install a dictatorship

If that is true, why didn’t Trump appoint someone as AG to go after former President Obama and Hillary Clinton the way that Garland is going after Trump? Why didn’t he have parents who who showed up at school board meeting and pushed form progressive ideas declared as terrorists? Why didn’t he lock up BLM and Antifa protestors without bail or clear charges? Why didn’t he seize cell phones from any legislators who seemed to show support for BLM or Antifa? Why didn’t he appoint someone to run the IRS and go after his political opponents? Why didn’t he send billions of dollars in cash to a nation that has made threats against the United States? Maybe some of you are not even aware of it, but that whole list is of things that have happened under the last 2 democrat presidents, not under Trump.

[Bert Perry]

But that said, I don’t know whether it’s worse that Trump does things in a societally unacceptable way, or that Obama and Biden appear to have weaponized federal agencies against their political opposition in a societally acceptable way

Trump weaponized agencies as much if not more than his predecessors. He was crafting US policy with Ukraine to try to get info on Hunter Biden. He wasn’t even hiding it. I am not saying other presidents are better, but Trump was not clean in this area by any stretch of the imagination.

[dgszweda]…He was crafting US policy with Ukraine to try to get info on Hunter Biden. He wasn’t even hiding it. …

And why should he hide it?

This is all so weird. If a foreign government is doing shady deals with the son of the US VP [and the VP, evidently] , pressuring that government to come clean is absolutely the right thing to do.

As far as the FBI vs Trump, I trust no one until the Jeffrey Epstein evils are revealed, which some people are going to great lengths to make sure doesn’t happen.

Thank you dgszweda for reminding me of yet another important issue.

Trump (nor his administration) did not start the investigation of Hunter Biden- authorities in Ukraine did. It was then Vice President Joe Biden who had the investigation stopped by threatening to withhold billions of dollars of aid. President Trump was impeached for simply asking questions about that investigation, while Biden actually used his political clout to have the investigation stopped. I think it was pretty clear who was acting more like a dictator.

[JD Miller]

Thank you dgszweda for reminding me of yet another important issue.

Trump (nor his administration) did not start the investigation of Hunter Biden- authorities in Ukraine did. It was then Vice President Joe Biden who had the investigation stopped by threatening to withhold billions of dollars of aid. President Trump was impeached for simply asking questions about that investigation, while Biden actually used his political clout to have the investigation stopped. I think it was pretty clear who was acting more like a dictator.

Prologue

Hunter Biden’s “work” in Ukraine nets them millions.

Epilogue

Under Joe Biden, we give Ukraine Billions.

Good summary of the status of the situation here: https://www.axios.com/2022/08/13/cracks-emerge-in-gops-mar-a-lago-respo…

As for GOP response, there is a clear division between the Hawley/Greene/Gosar/et al (Cruz?) wing and the McConnell wing. (I.e, between the “reactionary, say anything to stoke the base” wing and the “grown up, let’s at least pause, look at facts, and be strategic” wing.)

I wish conservatives in general were more apt to notice who’s being knee-jerk and who’s being serious, and remember that during primaries and elections.

What’s next: Many Republicans are calling for the Justice Department to also release of the affidavit in support of the warrant, which so far has not been made public.

“The warrant, you can’t fit much on there,” Fitzpatrick said. “Everything is going to be in that affidavit.”

Katko said if the affadavit isn’t made public “at least give it to us in a classified setting.”

The affidavit doesn’t have to be revealed to the public, but at least to congressional oversight. That would go a long way to clearing things up.

I note that Axios spelled “affidavit” wrong in that last line. Tsk, tsk.