The Show Notes: Raiding Mar-a-Lago
Welcome! The FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort late Monday night.
The show starts now and you’re really going to want to listen today.
Quote from Trump: My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents… they even broke into my safe!
What happened: The Federal Bureau of Investigation executed an unprecedented raid of Donald Trump’s estate late Monday evening to investigate whether he took classified documents from the White House. To be clear, the raid had nothing to do with January 6th or any alleged efforts to overthrow the election. Trump was in Manhattan when the raid occurred and was alerted by Eric Trump.
But Text and Pretext Matter: Andy McCarthy is a must read on this point. It is very plausible that while the raid had nothing to do with January 6, the pretext and context have everything to do with January 6.
For months, the Justice Department has had in its hip pocket a probable crime, the mishandling of classified documents, that could be used as a justification for searching Donald Trump’s estate. But in searching the estate, I don’t believe the FBI was looking for classified documents or other missing government records — not really. Just as in the searches of Clark and Eastman, the Bureau and Justice Department prosecutors were looking for evidence powerfully showing that the former president and his confederates knew their stolen-election claims were false. That’s what the DOJ needs, at a minimum, to indict Trump for crimes arising out of the January 6 uprising.
Odd: The Trump team had been in contact with the FBI and National Archive and willingly turned over documents earlier this year according to multiple sources. The ultimate question is why was a raid necessary instead of a simple phone call to someone who had been compliant with earlier requests?
What? The judge who approved the search warrant for the FBI raid worked with Jeffrey Epstein.
Keep in Mind: Trump’s team got a copy of the search warrant that outlines the evidence sought. They could make it public and get ahead of the DOJ and FBI.
Bottom line: The unprecedented raid was undoubtedly approved by Merrick Garland and will draw more scrutiny to the FBI after Republicans take back congress.
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