A Few Thoughts on the 'Mar-a-Lago' Raid

Neither the FBI and DOJ nor the Trump organization are telling an illuminating story. However, the FBI and DOJ are really ‘gaslighting’ the public. Also, neither the Rightish nor Leftish news media is helping to clarify matters.

First, in January, consistent with previous Presidents, the National Archives expressed the opinion that when the President left the White House, he took with him documents that were properly given to the National Archives. President Obama had an extensive disagreement that was eventually resolved. President Clinton kept audio tapes of White House meetings that the National Archives considered to belong to them. The court decided in favor of President Clinton. So, this kerfuffle is not a new thing and generally, the courts have found in favor of the President.

While the details of the original communication in January 2022 between Trump and the National Archives are not well documented, there was no indication that it was contentious. Then, on June 3, 2022, the FBI was invited to review documents at Mar-a-Lago, which they did, and took additional documents. Then, between June 3 and August 8, the FBI represents that they didn’t think that they had gotten all documents and that when attempts were made to retrieve them, the Trump attorneys became uncooperative. This led to the issuing of a search warrant that was executed on August 8 with the nine hour search of Mar-a-Lago. The problem is that nobody has come forth with a motion to compel. This is very troubling.

Typically, in a court case, the judge will issue a subpoena delineating documents that must be made available to the other side. If a document is not submitted, the party will file a motion to compel. The judge will then order the opposition to provide the missing document(s) under the penalty of contempt of court. This was apparently not done. Why? Well, we really don’t know. However, there is within the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) the speculation that the DOJ is attempting to keep Donald Trump from having the FBI documents that he declassified about the FBI investigation entitled ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ and that the DOJ is slow walking on their release. There is speculation that Trump is holding back the documents to maximize their political impact. According to this theory, a motion to compel was not made because these documents are declassified and, essentially, through the Freedom of Information Act, anyone can legally have them in their possession. They are not Presidential papers and they are not classified documents limited to the National Archives. However, they are taken to likely be politically damaging.

So, if this was, indeed, the objective of the search, the FBI needed to pull some shennanigans in order to get at the documents, which we can assume, Trump would be hiding, not because he couldn’t have them but because he was of the opinion that the FBI would take them anyway. In order to do that, they claimed a ‘whistle blower’ who informed them that Trump was holding classified documents elsewhere in the residence and, consequently, they would need a general search warrant. So, while we don’t know that this is the proper explanation, it is consistant with the evidence. Now, the DOJ is leaking that they may never indict Trump, which makes sense, if this is indeed the correct explanation.

Next, there has been much ado about the classified folders. First, there was a photo of them spread out on the floor. At first, it seems that at least the Leftish news was attempting to imply that Trump was so dismissive of the importance of classified documents that he just left them strewn about. Later, the FBI was forced to admit that their agents had spread them out on the floor, ostensibly to get lots of them in a single photo. A bigger issue, pointed out by several IDW pundits, is that there is no way of knowing if there were any documents inside of the folders at all. Pressed by the judge, the DOJ had to admit that they had, in fact, siezed a number of empty classified folders. The Leftish press tried to make this sound as if it was even more troubling. Actually, it is not.

Much has been made of the assertion that the President of the United States can declassify anything. That actually is quite troubling to a fair minded person. There should be some sort of restraint placed upon a ‘run amok’ POTUS. However, we do know that Trump did, in fact, declassify several documents, including those involved in Crossfire Hurricane, over the objections of many of the three letter agencies. While this is apparently true, Trump’s attorneys would insist upon proper documentation of the declassification as protection against precisely is happening right now. This process would undoubtedly involve taking the documents out of the folders marked classified and, presumably, the documents would also be marked in some way to establish that they had been declassified. When this was done, should the classified folders be destroyed? One might reasonably assume that his attorneys suggested that the folders be retained as a proper evidentiary trail. Consequently, there is no prima facie evidence that empty classified folders constitutes evidence of wrong doing.

Before ending this snippet, I do want to emphasize that this is not a partisan issue, other than the unassailable fact that the administrative state is unambiguously partisan Democrats. The Administrative State, in hindsight, was clearly engaging in the same types of misbehavior in the Trump administration. The issue that I try to highlight is that the U.S. Federal government is populated with between two and three million career civilian administrators who are not subject to democratic review and who actually run the government. Elections simply place a patina of democracy on the surface of the agencies, but primarily the administrative state is autocratic with minimal restraint provided by the courts. Of course, over the years, the courts have become filled with judges who find in favor of the bureaucrats. During his Presidency, Trump appointed judges who were rubber stamps for the Administrative State. When he ascended to the Presidency he vowed to ‘drain the swamp’ which was simply a politically charged way of saying that he would roll back the power of bureaucrats. So, the MAGA movement is actually properly characterized as the Administrative State vs the Populists. The Administrative State won round one and they are doing everything in their power to keep there from being a round two. Also, while this is coming to the forefront of public awareness in the U.S., from Hungary and Poland in the East to France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden in the West, this war is also erupting in the EU. It definitely played a significant role in Brexit.

This struggle is mostly flying under the radar right now, but as every year passes the conflict is becoming harder to hide.

There will be so much more on this, going forward.