McCarthy vs. Dershowitz on the Mar-A-Largo fishing expedition
Here’s Andrew C. McCarthy on yesterday’s Mar-A-Largo raid:
There’s a game prosecutors play. Let’s say I suspect X committed an armed robbery, but I know X is dealing drugs. So, I write a search-warrant application laying out my overwhelming probable cause that X has been selling small amounts of cocaine from his apartment. I don’t say a word in the warrant about the robbery, but I don’t have to. If the court grants me the warrant for the comparatively minor crime of cocaine distribution, the agents are then authorized to search the whole apartment. If they find robbery tools, a mask, and a gun, the law allows them to seize those items. As long as agents are conducting a legitimate search, they are authorized to seize any obviously incriminating evidence they come across. Even though the warrant was ostensibly about drug offenses, the prosecutors can use the evidence seized to charge robbery…
The ostensible justification for the search of Trump’s compound is his potentially unlawful retention of government records and mishandling of classified information. The real reason is the Capitol riot…
…The former president’s apparent violations of government records and classified information laws gave the DOJ the pretext it needed.
But a former president of the US and member of the opposition party is not any old drug-dealer. And the DA pursuing said drug-dealer is not a rival who is in danger of being politically bested by the person he is intent on arresting. It is another type of “game” to pretend otherwise.
McCarthy does acknowledge this aspect of the situation:
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.
Rather than conclude that Garland and company are political operatives executing a plan to harass and perhaps ultimately arrest the opposition, McCarthy prefers (at least for now) to assume that this means Garland has some sort of smoking-gun type goods on Trump:
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.
That’s an indication that, despite everything, McCarthy remains in some sort of naive bubble in which the public still believes this DOJ is non-partisan. My sense is that just about everyone on the right believes the DOJ and Garland are highly partisan, and the left is probably split between those who think the DOJ is objective and an equal number who know it’s quite partisan (favoring Democrats, of course) but think that’s just peachy-keen.
Here’s the final paragraph of McCarthy’s column:
In a powder keg, AG Garland is trying to turn up a smoking gun. Unless he can make a convincing violent-crime case against Trump, though, an indictment based on extravagant theories of fraud or mishandling of classified documents will blow up on the Justice Department.
McCarthy is showing more naivete here, I think. He is ignoring the extremely volatile nature of the search itself. He is ignoring the fact that so many Americans lost trust in the DOJ quite some time ago. He is also ignoring the fact that Garland and the others may not care what the American public thinks as long as they can get Trump.
One more thing – if they wanted to do this and have the best chance of avoiding the appearance of partisanship, why not appoint a special prosecutor? It’s almost certainly because they can’t risk having an actually nonpartisan person in charge, although it probably wouldn’t be hard to find a biased person with a supposedly good record, like Mueller way back when. At any rate, the Democrats want to be fully in charge of this, although for “bipartisan” cover they have allowed some rabid NeverTrumpers such as Liz Cheney into the mix.
Here’s how the special prosecutor statue is supposed to work:
A special prosecutor is a prosecutor who is independent of an office that would normally exercise jurisdiction in a criminal investigation—to avoid potential conflicts of interest or to facilitate subject matter area expertise. At the federal level, under 28 CFR § 600.1, a special prosecutor is referred to as a “special counsel,” and may be appointed by the attorney general to criminally investigate an individual or matter in cases where a Justice Department investigation would present a conflict of interest, or in other “extraordinary circumstances.” Under Supreme Court precedent in Morrison v. Olson, Congress may also appoint a special counsel through the passage of legislation.
If this isn’t a case in which the DOJ is completely compromised, I don’t know what is.
Yesterday, before the raid was reported, I described McCarthy this way:
Andrew C. McCarthy is one of those writers who’s sometimes very very good and sometimes not at all good. You never know exactly which McCarthy is going to turn up, except that he tends to be good on anything to do with Russiagate and ungood about January 6th.
That’s not just an idle statement. I’ve followed McCarthy for two decades, and I found his reaction to January 6th highly emotional and his judgment questionable at best. But he often is a good writer about legal matters, and that history is one of the reasons I continue to read him and occasionally to write about his pieces. But to refresh your memory on his initial reaction to January 6th, there’s this post of mine written on February 15, 2021. Here’s some of the relevant portion:
Some of you may recall that Andrew C. McCarthy hopped on the “Sicknick was murdered by rioters who hit him with a fire extinguisher” bandwagon. There was some discussion here of that in the comments in this thread. I see now that McCarthy has issued a sort of mea culpa. I’ve noticed that McCarthy is one of the few people who can actually say he was wrong without offering a ton of excuses [emphasis mine]:
“…I am one of the analysts who uncritically relied on the Times’ initial reporting, deducing from it the conclusion that Sicknick had been “murdered” by the rioters — not a long logical leap if you credit the assertion that a police officer was bashed over the head with a lethal object by rioters who were intentionally and forcibly confronting security forces. Julie Kelly took me to task again yesterday for having “regurgitated” the “narrative that Sicknick was murdered,” which I certainly did do — although I am not, as she describes, a political pundit of the “NeverTrump Right.” Because I repeated a very serious allegation that had not been supported by credible evidence from identifiable sources, I thought it was important to make clear, to the extent it is in my power to do so, that there is now immense reason to doubt the original reporting — while confessing (with a link to the column in which I included the “murder” allegation) that I was as guilty as any other analyst or reporter who amplified the dubious account.
“Second, and more significantly, the death of Officer Sicknick became a building block for the House’s impeachment of former President Trump and of the allegations posited by the Democratic House impeachment managers that were publicly filed in their pretrial brief on February 2. By then, there was already substantial reason to question the fire-extinguisher allegation.
“Prosecutors have an obligation, rooted in due process and professional ethics, to reveal exculpatory evidence. That includes evidence that is inconsistent with the theory of guilt they have posited. Even if Sicknick’s death was causally connected to the rioting, prosecutors would be obligated to correct the record if it did not happen the way they expressly represented that it happened. The House impeachment managers had not done that last week when NR published my column raising that issue, and to this day, although the impeachment trial is now over, we are still in the dark about the circumstances surrounding the officer’s tragic death, at age 42.”
In his article McCarthy offers a pretty good analysis of what the Times did and what the House managers did. And I don’t think McCarthy is happy with himself, either.
McCarthy is correct that he’s not a NeverTrumper, and he’s a smart guy and I think a basically honest one. But I wrote this in a previous thread about what I think is going on with him:
“I think McCarthy has long had a couple of problems. The first is that he’s somewhat naive and trusting (for example, of Comey, against whom he finally turned but it took a long time). The second is that he has an aversion to Trump. That doesn’t mean he won’t defend him at times – he will, but he has to overcome his natural aversion to the man in order to do so, and he’s often willing to think the worst of him. It’s almost a relief to him to think the worst of him, I think, so in this case he jumped right back into it for a while. But his basic honesty led him out of it again.”
It’s still a kneejerk reaction of McCarthy to think the worst of Trump and the best of someone like Garland, and in this McCarthy is typical of a lot of the Republican pundit class. I don’t think that he, or they, will ever change.
It’s instructive to see what Alan Dershowitz, nominal Democrat, is writing about the raid:
The more appropriate action would have been for a grand jury to issue a subpoena for any boxes of material that were seized and for Trump’s private safe that was opened. That would have given Trump’s lawyers the opportunity to challenge the subpoena on various grounds — that some of the material was not classified; that previous classified material was declassified by Trump; that other documents may be covered by various privileges, such as executive or lawyer-client.
Instead, the FBI apparently seized everything in view and will sort the documents and other material without a court deciding which ones are appropriately subject to Justice Department seizure.
Searches and seizures should only be used when subpoenas are inappropriate because of the risk of evidence destruction. It is important to note that Trump himself was 1,000 miles away when the FBI’s search and seizure occurred. It would have been impossible, therefore, for him to destroy subpoenaed evidence, especially if the subpoena demanded immediate production. If he or anyone else destroyed evidence that was subject to a subpoena, that would be a far more serious crime than what the search warrant seems to have alleged. It is unlikely that there is a basis for believing that the search warrant was sought because of a legitimate fear that subpoenaed evidence would be destroyed.
Defenders of the raid argue that the search warrant was issued by a judge. Yet every criminal defense lawyer knows that search warrants are issued routinely and less critically than candy is distributed on Halloween; judges rarely exercise real discretion or real supervision…
For zealous Trump haters, anything done to Trump is justified. For zealous Trump lovers, nothing done to him is ever justified. For the majority of moderate, thoughtful Americans, however, the Justice Department’s raid likely seems — at least at this point in time — to be unjust or needlessly confrontational.
What is the difference between McCarthy and Dershowitz? It’s not so much their political affiliation, because both have a similar distaste for Trump himself but a willingness to defend his actions at times. I submit that it is their differing backgrounds: prosecutor for McCarthy and defense attorney for Dershowitz. McCarthy sees this as a typical prosecutor gambit and Dershowitz sees it as a prosecutor violation of basic rights.
I think one of the most important aspects of the case – aside, of course, from the fact that Trump is this administration’s most threatening rival at the moment, and it is the administration’s DOJ pursuing him – is that the FBI and DOJ have a documented record of biased investigations of Trump and actual lies about him in order to further those investigations, as well as the framing of some of the people who have worked for him or with him. Much of the public is well aware of that and doesn’t trust these entities at all, and rightly so.
And they call Trump “divisive.”
I think McCarthy is out of touch. Trump’s son, and his lawyer, have stated that they were working with the appropriate people to identify ,any materials that should be returned.
Besides, reports, for whatever reports are worth, tell us that Trump has a security clearance as a former President, and that he has secure storage at his home.
McCarthy also does not factor in how many Trump associates have been paraded before the media in irons. This is simply the next step in the escalation.
This is banana republic stuff, and anyone who is sugar coating it needs to take off their tinted glasses.
This is explosive. Sooner or later people are going to reach a boiling point, and start thinking about what recourse is available. Since elections are now problematic, that narrows the options.
One more comment. We used to hear that although there were problems at the top of the FBI, the rank and file were good. Balderdash. If they were even decent there would be a flood of resignations by now. Good people do not act like storm troopers. Apparently, no one in the DOJ or FBI chain of command, or in the White House, said “wait. we can’t do this”. Not now, nor on the occasions when they broke into the homes of various Trump associates in the predawn hours and marched them out in irons.
The problem is that Dershowitz, while trying to be measured—actually, IN trying to be measured—also DOESN’T GET IT, proffering, as he does, potential “reasons”/justifications for Garland’s (actually, “Biden”‘s) outrageous STASI pitbull tactics.
Honestly I stopped paying too much attention to McCarthy after January 6th. Up until that point I found his experiences and perspective to be illuminating even if he was a slow learner, but afterwards I just got fed up with it for things I largely knew.
Also, kudos on Neo on pointing out the difference in background. But I would go further. McCarthy seeing this as a “typical prosecutor gambit” is one of the most damning things of all, because IF true it points out how rotten and degenerated the state of American “Justice” not only is, but has been for a long time; that things that should never have been acceptable except in a state of siege or other actual emergencies have become the “new normal.” One of the worst possible precedents to live under. But while McCarthy had motivation to not look the gift horse in the mouth because of his role as prosecutor, Dershowitz has reason to do so because of his position.
Re: Oldflyer, I agree McCarthy is out of touch at Best. Re good people in the rank and file I agree we can’t believe all or even most of the rank and file are, but there is incentive – especially in this situation- to not resign. In particular the Grassley mails were given by some FBI “resistants” acting as whistleblower. If these are the rules of the road why would we not do it?
They called Trump divisive and called him the biggest threat to democracy in the history of the country. And yet the powers that be feel that it’s their prerogative to ensure that supporters of Trump do not have the option to vote for him. As Dick Cheney said: “he must never be allowed anywhere near the presidency ever again”.
“…the biggest threat to democracy…”
What they mean is that in their pathetic need to hold onto power, he’s “…the biggest threat to THEM…”
That in their Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy world, THEY—not the country itself—are the so-called “democracy” that they’re claiming they absolutely must protect—at all costs—as THEY go about systematically destroying the country.
“L’etat, c’est NOUS.”
(And we’ll destroy it before we give it up to anyone who doesn’t acknowledge this simple, basic fact….)
Patriotism is the refuge of the scoundrel, it is said.
In this, it is their extraordinary fear of losing their POWER and their privileges that is driving them raving, criminally, rabidly insane.
Add McCarthy to the fool/knave lineup at NRO, joining David French. Sad indeed.
I used to take McCarthy seriously.
At this point I think McCarthy could be personally dragged from his home in his underwear and his default position would be ‘gee I guess they must have a smoking gun’.
His columns are almost a parody at this point. Kind of like that Tom Friedman thing that went around years ago that would start ‘my Moroccan cab driver related to me the deep problems with US-Moroccan relations while transporting me to interview King Mohammed’.
I sure McCarthy doesn’t have a horse and a barn.
The default sympathies of the NR crew are forever rising to the surface. (For a modest example of this, see their commentary on Nicholas Sandmann, Kyle Rittenhouse, and, a decade ago, George Zimmerman). The thing of it is, they’re not frauds so do correct themselves grudgingly. The frauds are employed by The Dispatch and The Bulwark. The NR crew aren’t on your side. They’re just not paid to lie for the Democratic Party.
Should be, “In this case, it is…”
joining David French
French left NR some years ago. French is a sinister character in a way McCarthy has never been.
This is how societies die, when people like McCarthy can’t even be bothered to understand their own arguments.
Notice what McCarthy is plainly acknowledging, that after all the time spent investigating the Jan. 6 riot, there’s STILL no compelling evidence of Trump actually committing a crime. If there was any such evidence, THAT is what would be used to justify Monday’s search. Instead, they’re using the classified documents dodge as an excuse to just look through everything of Trump’s they possibly can to find something, ANYTHING to charge him with.
McCarthy knows this is banana republic stuff but he can’t admit it to himself. So, he just says “Maybe they’ll find something to retroactively make it all okay.”
I’ll put my money down right now. If the GOP wins control of Congress in November and Trump wins the White House in ’24 and they try and break up and reform the corruption that even McCarthy now admit exists at DOJ and the FBI, McCarthy will be writing post after post defending both indefensible agencies.
Mike
“French is a sinister character in a way McCarthy has never been.”
I’m not sure French has the fortitude to be genuinely sinister, but he’s certainly ill-willed and personally vile in a way McCarthy is not.
Mike
Where’s the body??? There’s been no release of the actual warrant. I know, I know. They’ll fall back on “national security “. But that’s not going to cut it this time.
At this point, two options: armed, and real, insurrection by the 50 %, or we roll over and accept our new masters.
I’ll put my money down right now. If the GOP wins control of Congress in November and Trump wins the White House in ’24 and they try and break up and reform the corruption that even McCarthy now admit exists at DOJ and the FBI, McCarthy will be writing post after post defending both indefensible agencies.
I’d like to think so, but AFIACT, the only think Bitc* McConnell gives a rip about is tossing bon bons at business lobbies in return for campaign cash.
Another thing which might be beneficial would be a comprehensive recomposition of the federal criminal code which would recalibrate sentences and scrape away humbug offenses (“crossing state lines with intent to…”). (An unsympathetic character who faced federal charges having committed crimes state courts were perfectly competent to deal with was Jared Fogle, the Subway pitchman. He and his confederate deserved time in prison, just not sentences which exceed those given the average murderer).
he’s like the prince of pankot, in temple of doom, a convenient tool
https://gab.com/PatriotsDotWin
now most everybody in the rizzotto tray media, including maggie haberman, ought to be properly disregarded, disdained , if possible, heckled with pieces of dried fruit,
The excuse that McCarthy is naive is no longer tenable. He is willfully blind to the deeper implications of the Deep State’s actions. Hanging on to technicalities to avoid simple and obvious realities.
“I submit that it is their differing backgrounds: prosecutor for McCarthy and defense attorney for Dershowitz. McCarthy sees this as a typical prosecutor gambit and Dershowitz sees it as a prosecutor violation of basic rights.” neo
I think that’s the right of it.
Wherein both fail is in refusing to acknowledge (within their own minds) the deeper implications of what the democrat party has become, of the treasonous subversion that they are engaged in and of the democrat’s true Marxist, nation destroying agenda.
The Democrat Party left Alan Dershowitz long ago and he won’t admit it, most of all to himself.
If the Republicans take the House in November, they should elect Donald Trump Speaker, a position that doesn’t require a seat in the House.
time to get more flying monkeys,
https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/09/voters-trump-responsible-jan-6-democrats-select-committee-hearings-monmouth-university-poll/
It’s not surprising that poll shows little impact from the Jan. 6 hearings. Show trials SUCK as theater. Watch almost any legal drama at all. One of the most important things is if your show is focused on a prosecutor, you have to make the defense a formidable opponent and vice versa.
Mike
Please, it might be legitimate This time, after crying wolf for 5 years and nothing to show for it. No one has been investigated more than DJT with thousands of researchers, lawyers and FBI and Intelligence experts.
as to habeas corpus,
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/two-dozen-gop-lawmakers-may-force-capitol-police-release-unseen-j6-footage
I didn’t know you don’t have to be a member of congress to be Speaker of the House. That would be some next level shit!
I read this NR piece as just the nuts and bolts of how the DOJ is investigating the President and his subordinates– a stealth investigation using the pretext of misuse of classified documents.
This certainly reads like McCarthy still has contacts in the DOJ and this is the gossip around the water fountain.
His style changes between this is what is going on and the admonition that Garland better have evidence of a capitol riot felony.
“No, the Justice Department is trying to make a Capitol riot case, but Garland is not sure at this point that he has one he’s comfortable bringing. And since it would be explosive to signal that Trump is the subject of a Capitol riot investigation, the DOJ is trying to investigate him as such without saying so.”
This is part speculation and part admonition. McCarthy lays out in another NR story the evidence that this stealth investigation is going on with the search of Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman.
This article was written published June 28:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/the-stealth-inspector-general-investigation-of-donald-trump/
“Understand: The Justice Department knows that Clark and Eastman are represented by counsel. It could easily have issued grand-jury subpoenas for Clark and Eastman and delivered those subpoenas to their lawyers, with instructions that whatever materials were sought be promptly surrendered to the FBI. That would be the normal procedure when government lawyers are dealing with investigative subjects who are not suspected of violent crimes and have alerted the government that they have attorneys. Here, instead, the Justice Department went covertly to federal judges — in this case, the DOJ would have been able to forum-shop, since it knew when each of those judges would be on search-warrant duty — and obtained warrants that enabled federal agents to rifle through the belongings of these Trump associates, only after subjecting them to the humiliation of temporary arrest and frisk, without notifying their lawyers.”
“…the Justice Department is engaged in subterfuge to conceal that Trump is the target of its criminal investigation.”
I don’t have to like McCarthy. I don’t have to believe the DOJ has substantial evidence that the President did anything wrong. All they have to do is make a wild circumstantial case– the media and the left-wing fascists will connect the dots– even if it’s only in their head.
McCarthy knows the system. I suspect he has heard enough at the water cooler to be credible as to what the Biden DOJ’s playbook is.
McCarthy has certainly believed the wrong people at times, but I don’t remember him ever trotting out wild stories.
All the Biden DOJ needs to uncover is any evidence that a Trump subordinate had communications with any of the groups at the J6 protest and the trial will begin.
Garland is a thug who sends bureau agents after parents at school boards, who prosecutes innocent cops, so farking what if someone was in contact with a rally that involved 50,000 people,
M Cervantes,
I’m just speculating that would be all a DC jury pool needed to convict. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
What does the FBI need to do to convince someone like McCarthy that they are thoroughly corrupt?
There was the unprecedented step of the FBI Director, an investigator, deciding prosecutorial discretion not to charge Hillary Clinton for a crime that he claimed to be administrative and based on intent, despite simultaneously prosecuting a submariner for the same crime and the statute specifically stating “intent” isn’t a defense.
We later learn that this decision was announced after an FBI agent lied in a FISA warrant that a CIA asset was a foreign asset, thus leading to wiretaps on an opposition political campaign.
While this was happening, an FBI SAC was ignoring numerous complaints of world class female gymnast being sexually assaulted by a USOC doctor, because the same FBI SAC was interested in a job with the USOC.
As we move into late 2016, Gen. Flynn is arrested for lying to a government official after being lied to by government officials.
The Steele Dossier is portrayed by the FBI as a legitimate document and evidence of criminal conduct by a President despite not being vetted, because any attempt to verify claims in the document would have obviously failed.
We later learn FBI senior leaders, having an affair, were texting each other plots to take down the President using “insurance”, which is obviously faked evidence.
After 3 years of a special prosecutor investigation, we learn that Russia spent a whopping $100,000 to buy mostly BLM ads to influence the election, but also a handful of right-leaning pro-life ads. The Steele Dossier is debunked, but it would be a bit later before it was admitted that the document was literally written by interviewing drunk Russians at a bar. The FBI took this seriously and we needed a special prosecutor but nobody notes this as a more significant political influence via collusion by the UK, Russia diplomats, and the FBI than a few Faceebook ad buys. Also the author of the dossier was previously discredited by the FBI.
The FBI investigates one of the deadliest mass shootings in the US in Las Vegas, but ends up sealing all the evidence, not providing any motive, and making it illegal for anyone to try and look into the matter further.
After more years investigating the FBI debacle regarding the Steele Dossier, we learn that several agents lied, but only one is prosecuted and he gets off via jury nullification, yet the jury still admits he was lying.
The FBI investigates a bombing in Nashville, only to seal the evidence and not provide any motive.
The FBI arrests 4 people in a reported kidnapping plot with all sorts of talk on the motives. When the matter goes to court, 2 are acquitted due to entrapment, and 2 others get a hung jury.
The FBI ignores death threats against Supreme Court Justices. Fails to uphold laws regarding protesting at the Justices private homes. And an attempted assassination of a Justice is prevented because the assassin changes his mind at the last minute.
Now, the FBI conducts a raid on a former President and hopeful to run again, that just this weekend one a major endorsement. And people are unsure if they should question the FBI’s reasons for the raid?
I’ll admit that this is all written from recollection and some things may be a bit incorrect, but I doubt any of the substantive complaints are entirely wrong. Maybe they did give us the motive of the Nashville bomber? Oh yeah, he was just suicidal. Suicides normally go through the trouble of rigging an RV as a vehicle born IED, warning people out of the area, and then blowing it up near important infrastructure. If you buy that, then I suspect the raid was perfectly fine in your book.
Trafalgar Group — along with Rasmussen, one of the best, nationally — did polling on the Rule of Law in America in late July.
“A new poll from the Trafalgar Group has shown that nearly 79 percent of Americans understand that there is a separate standard of laws that are applied to the politically connected while the rest of us live under an entirely different set of rules.
“The results show 79.3 percent of Americans believe there are two tiers of laws – one that applies to Washington D.C. insiders and another that applies to ordinary Americans. Only 11.6 percent of Americans believe that laws are applied under an equal standard while 9.1 percent of Americans are unsure of the question”
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/poll-over-75-percent-of-americans-believe-the-deep-state-has-destroyed-the-rule-of-law/
THIS FRACAS CANNOT GO WELL FOR THE LEFT….
I’ve spent time finally taking in the YT poster play, “FBI Lovebirds,” from last year.
The most infamous text reads “No, we’ll stop him [Trump]” from getting elected.
In case you don’t know, a play write used the SMS cell phone texts between FBI “Special” Agent Peter Strzok and his lover “Special” Agent Lisa Page — both lawyers and both married to others, (Stzok’s wife is ALSO currently investigating Trump for the SEC…conflict of interest, anybody? Nope — the Left’s SOP since Obama, apparently.) — along with their Congressional investigative testimony, to show us how they have behaved through Russiagate/Obamagate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCutKd11kjg
Two things remain with me. First, how emotionally driven and expressively judgmental they are — precisely how political psychology suggests. And second, astonishment that these two “adults” still behave precisely as HS cafeteria social climbing coquettes did as teens (SEE “Mean Girls,” “Jawbreaker,” “Heathers,” and maybe “Election” for Hollywood versions).
Jeez. No adult supervision there.
What’s past is undoubtably prologue.
I think it’s like this: Andrew McCarthy, like Brit Hume, like Peggy Noonan, and like so many other Inside-the-Beltway types that view themselves as ‘principled’, still have a patch of Inside-the-Beltway hallowed ground, onto which they will not trespass. As much as they despise Trump, it’s not because of Trump. Trump has laid bare the pretense of the Washington DC caste system – Progressive leftists and ‘principled’ RINOs alike. When someone like Trump is wronged, people like McCarthy will only go so far to defend them, and no further. They will not cross the hallowed ground, because they have built their entire social persona on its premise. All of their personal social capital is tied up in its relevancy; they are in semi-retirement, basking in its glow. If they were to venture there, and begin to criticize the Deep State, it would be an exercise of self-repudiation. Not only of their career; it would erase the meaning of their adult lives – and they couldn’t bear that liquidation of what they have worked to create.
Dershowitz has always been a bit of an outcast because his advocacy has often been fearless. He’s been calling out the Deep State all his life; it has no hold over him.
Is that all
https://nypost.com/2022/08/09/trump-raid-sparked-by-boxes-of-materials-including-kim-jong-un-letters/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
If only comrade Stalin knew about this.
KRB
The FBI investigates one of the deadliest mass shootings in the US in Las Vegas, but ends up sealing all the evidence, not providing any motive, and making it illegal for anyone to try and look into the matter further.
Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada have police forces and prosecutors, as does the State of Nevada. The FBI cannot prevent them from investigating.
https://mobile.twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1557148977140830208?cxt=HHwWgMC8zdOvjZwrAAAA
Jonathan Turley tweeted out an hour or more ago:
A safe cracker opened the safe. It was empty.
Turley says this suggests no obvious evidence of Trump’s attempt to conceal.
https://instapundit.com/536151/#comment-5942881266
Having absorbed KT Macfarlane’s book, and Patrick Byrnes, as well, these enemies have no clue about how transparent consultative Trump’s decision-making is — they now project their evil narcissism upon our real resident because they cannot imagine someone with power, or wanting power, who isn’t equally pathologically driven.
It is totally revealing of who they are.
Andrea Widburg shares duelling lawyers on “the motive” evident in the FIB raid against the Real President.
DNCs hired hack and Perkins-Clintonian dark strategist, Marc Elias, tweets — but Law School prof Josh Blackmon rebukes, at the bottom:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/marc_elias_boasts_about_the_real_motive_behind_the_fbis_maralago_raid.html
She mispelled evil, of course they are trying to muzzle publications like anerican thinker that published the truth
McCarthy, the man who wrote Willful Blindness. I gave up on him some time ago, and the FBI before him.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/08/09/fbi-seizes-phone-of-gop-congressman-tied-to-trump-n2611518
“The FBI and the DOJ just crossed the Rubicon. The Biden regime is going to arrest its political opponents on fabricated charges to avoid defeat in future elections. The Democrats are seizing power — and they don’t care if you notice now.”
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-banana-republic-of
Trump ally Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) says the FBI seized his cellphone one day after Mar-a-Lago raid.
https://instapundit.com/536151/
Dershowitz wrote: “Defenders of the raid argue that the search warrant was issued by a judge. Yet every criminal defense lawyer knows that search warrants are issued routinely and less critically than candy is distributed on Halloween; judges rarely exercise real discretion or real supervision…”
About that judge…
Judge Who Approved Mar-a-Lago Raid Was Obama Donor, Linked to Jeffrey Epstein
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/08/09/judge-who-approved-mar-a-lago-raid-was-obama-donor-linked-to-jeffrey-epstein-n1619563
democRATS give a flying fig for rights and due process. The 2 impeachments are proof of that.
If the DOJ is looking for an unbiased special prosecutor who knows Washington, I hear that Liz Cheney will soon be available.
@ miguel > “Garland is a thug who sends bureau agents after parents at school boards”
Well, there you go!
https://babylonbee.com/news/report-fbi-raided-mar-a-lago-on-false-tip-that-parents-were-protesting-a-school-board-meeting-there
@ Gothamite > “As Dick Cheney said: “he must never be allowed anywhere near the presidency ever again”.”
Absolutely.
https://babylonbee.com/news/never-has-america-faced-a-greater-threat-than-donald-trump-says-guy-who-started-two-wars-and-shot-a-dude-in-the-face
JimNorCal said at 11:08, “Trump ally Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) says the FBI seized his cellphone one day after Mar-a-Lago raid.”
Update on this seizure from William Jacobson: There’s obviously a full-on DOJ-FBI effort to get Trump on something. That’s part of what’s happening here. But there’s probably a lot that we don’t know about how that is going to happen. I think we’ll find out right after the midterms when DOJ/FBI slam down whatever hammer they think they have.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/somethings-happening-here-feds-seize-cell-phone-of-trump-ally-house-rep-scott-perry-day-after-mar-a-lago-raid/
Margot Cleveland is the Best.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/09/search-warrant-or-not-americans-wont-believe-the-fbi-raid-on-trumps-florida-home-was-justified/
As a matter of political calculus, of course Dems are treading on dangerous ground.
But don’t overlook the danger to Repubs.
If you are in a Red district, what is your motive to vote for an R if they don’t speak out? If they don’t oppose The Swamp? If they don’t denounce open borders, lax crime enforcement, J6 political prisoners, wasteful spending, …?
Plenty of Repubs are mild and middle of the road.
JimNorCal – Because you’ll be governed by progressive radicals if you don’t vote, kind of like Georgians who are now represented by Warnock and Osoff because 100k or so of them didn’t bother to vote in the runoff after Trump told them it was fixed. Kind of like the entire country, which has now had progressive garbage shoved down our throats for two years because 100k or so Georgians didn’t bother to vote in the runoff after Trump told them the election was rigged. (I’m sure we’ll all enjoy the 87,000 new IRS agents. Pro-tip – they aren’t being hired to audit progressives.)
1st choice – A Republican who will fight intelligently and win
2nd choice – A mild and middle of the road Republican isn’t going to actively make things worse
Last choice – A progressive
Selecting Republicans who fight foolishly and lose is the functional equivalent of selecting a progressive.
neo – I think McCarthy tells us that the rot at the DOJ and FBI is a relatively recent phenomenon. His inclination to give the benefit of the doubt to the DOJ and FBI appear to be based on his experience at the DOJ working with non-partisan professionals. Even after he figured out the Russiagate caper, he still regularly drew a distinction between the lower-level career attorneys and agents versus the leadership. (Of course, an organization with politicized leadership will very soon have a politicized rank-and-file too.)
Have you read Bill Barr’s book? It more or less tells the same story. Barr is very hard on Lawrence Walsh (with cause) but even considering that, the difference between his first and second stints as AG is striking.
It’s tough to speculate from the outside, but one thing that happened between Barr’s two tours as AG and after McCarthy’s retirement from the DOJ is the Obama administration.
Related to the McCarthy in the House, I’ve been bothered by this statement since I read it. The way it is phrased “has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” leads one to believe that Kevin McCarthy believes there was a tolerable state of weaponized politicization before this raid.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is poised to possibly become speaker should Republicans win the majority in November’s midterm elections, vowed to launch oversight investigations into the Justice Department.
“The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” he said on Twitter. “Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”
Oldflyer:
When you write: “Trump has a security clearance as a former President, and that he has secure storage at his home”,
I think national security regulations say classified documents at the level of Secret and below may be stored in a secure vault without being manned 24 hours, but at the level of Top Secret they must be in a secure vault that is supervised full-time. I know that was true when I was handling classified documents. In our embassies, there was a Marine Security Guard on duty night and day, seven days a week.
The impact of the Mar-a-Lago raid is now marinating in the public mind.
When it’s time to toss the tenderized product on the grill – it may very well explode.
Unintended consequences?
McCarthy was a prosecutor and his focus was on terrorism, so he has close connections to the FBI and the neocons and the national security apparatus. More than that, he wants to believe the FBI and the DOJ are honorable and trustworthy. Sometimes the truth gets through to him. Sometimes it doesn’t. From what I can see he’s still more open to facts that don’t go along with his preconceptions than David French or the Bulwark crowd.
The old game of “Telephone” may be relevant here. Some agents lower down are working on something. To secure their funding and look good, they tell their supervisors that they are on the verge of finding something. This story goes up through the bureaucracy, exaggerated every step of the way. It lands on Garland’s desk, and he says, if you’re that close to getting real evidence get a warrant and go for it. It wouldn’t be that hard to convince a judge after convincing all those bureaucrats. Was that actually what happened? Probably it was more nakedly political than that and tied to the congressional hearings and the upcoming elections, but thinking one has a solid case and having one aren’t the same thing.
The FBI even investigated Melania’s wardrobe when they raided Mar-a-Lago: “FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office, breaking open his safe and rifling through drawers when they raided the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida Monday morning. . . . A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have ‘planted stuff’ because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.
The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored.”
Photos of the raid at the link:
https://nypost.com/2022/08/09/fbi-even-searched-melanias-wardrobe-in-trump-raid/
In view of Neo’s weekend post about royal gowns, I wonder whether the Fibbers were scrutinizing the wardrobe for gowns above Melania’s station, so to speak.
@Bauxite on August 10, 2022 at 8:20 am
” I think McCarthy tells us that the rot at the DOJ and FBI is a relatively recent phenomenon.”
Whitey Bulger
Ruby Ridge
Branch Davidians
25-30 Years back is not ‘relatively recent’ It is a full generation / career time frame.
Kris– The rot goes even further back: the FBI investigated the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (for supposed Nazi connections) during their trips to the United States during WWII when the Duke was governor general of the Bahamas. Archived official FBI documents here, in PDF format:
https://archive.org/details/DukeAndDuchessOfWindsor/windsor1a/mode/2up
If you want the same story with a lot more social gossip and garnish, here’s “Palm Beach Confidential: The Windsors and the FBI (1940-1942)”:
https://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/palm-beach-confidential-the-windsors-and-the-fbi-1940-1942/
Lots of photos, including J. Edgar himself with his “companion” Clyde Tolson: sample caption: “The FBI’s top enforcer, Clyde Tolson, left, and its supreme director, J. Edgar Hoover, right, the nation’s stellar crimefighting couple, crossed paths with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the world’s iconic lovers, at Palm Beach and Miami during the early 1940s. During that same period, Tolson and Hoover often shared a cabana on Miami Beach.” Scroll down for a 1937 photo of Hoover wearing shorts and a fetching pair of strapped sandals while playing backgammon with Tolson.
I wonder how today’s FBI celebrates Pride Month.
The FBI, as has been said before likely by me, has two classes of agents. One class didn’t resign after the Waco massacre. The other class applied for employment after the Waco massacre.
Thus, 100% of fibbies have no problem with the Waco massacre.
A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have ‘planted stuff’ because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.
I have read in the last few days that security cameras in the estate were turned off by the FBI. This stinks to high heaven.
Mike K:
The Epstein effect. Oops, cameras stopped working. Again. Funny that.
I’d heard that the US Capitol building had some cameras inside and on on Jan. 6, 2021. Funny that, too.
A big problem here is that Democratic appointees to the bench are the FBI’s collaborators in these matters. So are the public defenders now and again.
I had a TS/SCI/SBI clearance. As President, Trump had plenary authority to have any document declassified. Even if it wasn’t restamped at the time, that’s immaterial. That’s built-in reasonable doubt toward any case regarding mishandling. And it isn’t the intelligence community concerned- it’s the National Archives. This is all a massive screw-up perpetrated by the clowns in the administration.
Here’s one opinion on just when the FBI started veering off the tracks:
“Former FBI Agent Says Agency’s Political Bias Started Under Mueller”—
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mueller-fbi-political/2022/08/10/id/1082567/
If the DOJ’s legitimacy “hinges on the public’s acceptance of it as a non-partisan law-enforcer” it has no legitimacy. People on the right don’t accept it as a non-partisan law enforcer. Democrats don’t even want it to be a non-partisan law enforcer, and are satisfied that it is not. Does anybody believe that McCarthy (a former fed himself, isn’t he?) is really that naive? I believe that he, like the rest of the National Review crew, is just spinning for the establishment. He’s trying to tamp down the right’s outrage over this naked fascist bullshit, doing his bit to preserve the feudal status quo.
McCarthy was not good on Russiagate. He was one of the last people to acknowledge it was a hoax , after convicting Trump after each daily fake news report.