Copeland's Corner: August 10, 2022
It's time for a few inconvenient facts about the FBI's search of Mar-A-Lago.
In an historically unprecedented move, on Monday the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-A-Lago, the club/residence of former President Donald Trump. It is being reported that the search was part of the investigation into Trump’s violation the Presidential Records Act, which states that a U.S. president’s papers belong to the public. Like most of our rules, laws and governmental norms, the former president doesn’t believe that the law applies to him.
For well over a year, the National Archives has been trying to retrieve hundreds (possibly thousands) of documents that Trump illegally took with him when he left the White House in January of 2021. Prior to the execution of the warrant, 15 boxes of documents (some torn up) have been recovered from Mar-A-Lago. The inventory of the recovered papers is reportedly one hundred pages long. A second inventory of recovered classified documents runs three pages. That doesn’t include classified documents that are so top secret that they can’t even be listed on an inventory sheet. Where are all of the people who were so concerned about the handling of classified documents in 2016 whining, “What about her emails?”
Trump did what he always does and played the victim, making the preposterous claim that the search was like the Watergate break-in, only conducted by the Democrats. Trump supporters staged an impromptu rally at Mar-A-Lago, a club most of them could never join with the initiation fees running in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Congressional Republicans are vowing “revenge,” with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy tweeting that Attorney General Merrick Garland had better, “preserve your documents and clear your calendar.” Other Republicans in the House of Representatives, many of whom scoffed at the “Defund the Police” cries of a few years ago, are calling for the defunding of the FBI. The biggest lark is that this is some kind of “political weaponization” of the Justice Department.
Time for a few inconvenient facts. Due to the unprecedented nature of this action, this warrant was likely the most carefully scrutinized search warrant in American history. First, Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI and a Republican appointed by Trump, had to sign off on it. Then, Attorney General Merrick Garland had to sign off. Next a federal judge had to find that there was probable cause that a crime has been committed, that evidence of said crime was at the former president’s residence, that the evidence would not be voluntarily turned over and that there was a possibility of the evidence being destroyed if immediate action wasn’t taken. Only then could a search warrant be issued. TWO branches of government, the Executive AND the Judicial, had to agree to take this action.
What’s scary to me is that Republicans are saying that it’s “improper” to investigate Trump, meaning that unlike the rest of us, he is somehow above the law. They aren’t alone. According to recent polling, only 75% percent of Americans agree with the statement, “No one is above the law.” While that’s a significant majority, it’s disheartening that 25% of the people in this nation disagree. I find it nonsensical that so many people in America today are “immune” to facts. There is a mountain of evidence that Trump and his minions committed multiple crimes both during and after his term in office, yet many ignore them, distort them or just don’t care. They’re in a cult and they’re brainwashed.
I also find it ironic that the search took place on August 8, the 48th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency. It has been said that if Fox News and the right-wing media we have today had existed in the early 70s, Nixon would have survived Watergate. I have no doubt. When a majority of Republicans are convinced that Trump really won the 2020 election and many believe that the attempted coup on January 6, 2021, was “no big deal,” it’s obvious that the conservative echo chamber can get them to believe anything.
Make no mistake, though, what happened at Mar-A-Lago this week is in fact a big deal. It’s something very serious and we’ll eventually find out what it was that convinced a federal judge to sign off on the search. In the meantime, I hope that this man, who has never been held accountable for anything he’s ever done in his entire life, finally finds out that he truly isn’t above the law.