What did federal agents find in Donald Trump’s mansion? This question remains unanswered. While the FBI, Justice Department and White House remain silent on the search for Mar-a-Lago, Republicans have rushed to portray the operation as an illegal political maneuver designed to hurt the former president. The record raises the temperature of the pressure cooker of US politics, in which it was a bombshell whose shockwave will reach the general election in three months and most likely the presidential election in 2024.
Trump already appeared more than ready to enter the presidential race, but those closest to the former president believe the search of his home will not weaken his will to run in the election, but strengthen it, even if it does it’s about justifying yourself. Trump has chosen to portray himself as a martyr, a victim of political persecution and a “coordinated attack by the radical left” and prosecutors, as he described on his social network this Tuesday.
Republicans, especially the most radical, had already weaponized the discourse of instrumentalization of the judiciary, and some, beginning with Trump himself, spoke of a “Soviet” system. After registration, the speech became extreme and generalized. Numerous Republican governors have joined the former president’s message, including Florida’s Ron De Santis, who sounds like an alternative to Trump for the 2024 presidential election: “MAL’s record [Mar-a-Lago] it is a further escalation in the use of federal agencies as weapons against political opponents of the regime while treating people like Hunter Biden with kid gloves.” tweeted, Finally: “Banana Republic”.
“This is the next level of Nixonism” said Gregg Abbott, Gov. of Texas. “Never before has the country seen a government go to such lengths to use government resources to attack a former president and political rival. This turns power into a weapon to suppress dissent. Such abuses must have limits,” he added.
It was pronounced in the same sense South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem: “The FBI’s raid on President Trump’s home is an unprecedented use of the Justice Department as a political weapon. You’ve followed President Trump as a candidate, as President, and now as a past President. Using the criminal justice system in this way is un-American.” Or the one from Virginia, Glenn Youngkin: “Selective and politically motivated actions have no place in our democracy.”
The list is endless. Even Mike Pence, who was vice president under Trump but has been at odds with him since Joe Biden’s January 6, 2021 victory certification meeting, was added: “Yesterday’s action undermines public confidence in our justice system and Attorney General Garland must give the American people a full explanation as to why this action was taken and he must do so without delay.”
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Harriet Hageman, favorite to win Wyoming’s Republican primary next week that would see her take the House seat from Liz Cheney, Trump’s toughest critic in her party, has seen an opportunity to mark the country Denouncing “political persecution”: “If the FBI can treat a former president like that, imagine what they can do to the rest of us. It is a double standard justice system: one for the elites and one for their political enemies.”
If something was missing to load the ink, Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry yesterday denounced that three FBI agents visited him while he was away with his family and confiscated his cell phone. “I am outraged – if not surprised – that the FBI, under the direction of Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice, is seizing the phone of a sitting member of Congress.” This further inflamed sentiment among some of his coreligionists.
Third world country, politicizing the FBI, using the judiciary as a political weapon, prosecuting opponents were repeated across the Republican spectrum, always without evidence and without knowledge of the details of the procedure. Democrats are prudent and at times questioning whether the operation can be reversed: “The Justice Department must immediately explain the reason for its raid, and it must be something more than a search for irrelevant files, or it will be seen as a political tactic.” and any future credible investigation and the legitimacy of the 6 Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has written.
uncertain scenarios
The scenarios that open up are varied and uncertain, and their evolution depends largely on the evolution of the investigations and legal cases in which Trump is involved, beginning with that related to the handling of presidential documents.
It had been known for months that Trump had brought documents to Mar-a-Lago, some of them marked as confidential, others damaged. The National Archives themselves announced it in a detailed statement. Can that be processed? There’s no precedent, but it would be defensible with the wording of the law, which contemplates two separate document-handling crimes that Trump was never wary of. Is it fair to search a former president’s home? It depends on what additional evidence the FBI had that this was necessary.
Records officials suspected that Trump had not provided all of the documents and forwarded them to the Justice Department, which had been conducting an investigation and tug-of-war with Trump for months that went almost unnoticed until Monday’s recording. In practice, the assessment of the appropriateness of the measure depends on what the agents have found. If they were not given evidence upon entering Mar-a-Lago, it will be very difficult to defend that the search, which the White House claims it did not receive prior notice of, made any sense.
Most observers and commentators believe that the Justice Department and FBI could not have taken such a step lightly and that a judge would not have authorized a search of the Trump mansion without hard evidence, but in the absence of explanation, the Republican response has taken the floor .
The short-term effect of the election is also not evident. Trump may be tempted to bring forward the announcement that he will run for the 2024 presidential election, but that could turn November’s general election, which Republicans almost took for granted despite Biden’s recent good run, into a referendum on the former president likes nothing to do with of his party because it can stir up and mobilize democratic voters. But even if he doesn’t make that announcement, Trump will be far more present in the minds of voters than he already was, which was no small feat.
Appointment with the public prosecutor’s office this Wednesday
Legal problems are piling up for Donald Trump. The former president is scheduled to testify about his real estate deal this Wednesday as part of the investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Insider said Tuesday night.
According to the publication, Trump is to be questioned in person in Manhattan. The prosecutor accuses him of falsehoods in the documents his group used to create hundreds of millions of dollars in tax exemptions and bank loans.
The statement was originally scheduled for July but was delayed by the death of his first wife, Ivana Trump.
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