End Trump raid secrecy
by Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent |
| August 09, 2022 04:51 PM
END TRUMP RAID SECRECY. There's a line at the end of an Axios newsletter that sums up everything that is wrong about media coverage and public discussion of the FBI's unprecedented raid on the home of former President Donald Trump. "These investigations are top secret," Axios's Mike Allen wrote. "So more likely than not, we won't get the full picture any time soon."
The bad word is secret. Excessive secrecy gave rise to wild, absolutely crazy speculation during the years of the Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation. Little bits of information would leak, upon which journalists and other talking heads would build elaborate structures of speculation. In no time, supposedly reasonable people were fantasizing about the president of the United States being a Russian asset. It was nuts, but that's how secrecy and speculation work together. In the end, of course, a lengthy special counsel investigation could not establish that any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign ever occurred, much less who might have been involved in it. But the damage done by all that speculation remained.
Now, the FBI has searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump's home in Palm Beach, Florida. Why did they do it? Here is the weird thing about the raid: There has been lots and lots of public discussion about the Justice Department's Jan. 6 investigation. Prosecutors are supposedly investigating the former president for, among other things, allegedly obstructing an official proceeding, meaning the Jan. 6, 2021, congressional certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes. A grand jury is involved. Some former top Trump aides have testified.
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So, there's already a Justice Department investigation of Trump. Then comes the raid on Mar-a-Lago. The immediate thought is that it has to be part of the department's Jan. 6 inquiry. And then comes word that no, that's not it at all — instead, it was somehow about Trump's handling of classified documents and whether or not he turned over to the National Archives all the documents he possessed from his presidential years, as is required by the Presidential Records Act.
What??? They raided Mar-a-Lago over a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act? Really? It seems an insanely disproportionate thing to do. What the FBI did is without precedent in American history. Would they take such a momentous step over an archival matter? Indeed, on Tuesday morning, Politico wrote, "One perplexing aspect of the Mar-a-Lago search, at least to some legal analysts, is the crime reportedly being investigated does not seem to match the unprecedented tactic of an FBI raid on a former president's residence."
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-end-trump-raid-secrecy
