Last weekend I had an entirely different topic planned for this week. Then, we had perhaps the weirdest week in American presidential history. Let’s start with a chronology.
Trump, through a series of bizarre actions, makes public that he is under investigation for violating the Espionage Act
August 8, Monday: The FBI, pursuant to a warrant, searched Mar-a-Lago. Trump cast the search as a “raid” and a “siege” in which a large number of FBI agents “occupied” his home.
According to reporting, Trump was shocked by the search, and believed that the raid would help him politically:
Immediately after the search, Trump seemed to believe the FBI had played into his hands. Instead of exhibiting any concern, two people who spoke to him Monday evening both reported that Trump was “upbeat,” convinced the Justice Department had overreached and would cause Republicans to rally to his cause and help him regain the presidency in 2024.
Consider the above attitude in conjunction with the fact that the search was carried out in part because the National Archives realized that among the items that Trump hadn’t returned in January 2021 were “sensitive signals intelligence — intercepted electronic communications such as emails and phone calls of foreign leaders.” (So he thought he could keep sensitive top secret material and if the DOJ acted, it would help him politically.)
August 10, Wednesday: The FBI issued subpoenas to Pennsylvania lawmakers.
Meanwhile, many of the prominent commentators who had been spending the past 10 months slamming Garland became Garland fans (including Laurence Tribe, who praised Garland as a person of integrity who is restoring rule of law. I wondered if my FAQs became obsolete overnight.)
August 10, Wednesday: From a leak, which could only have come from Team Trump, we learned that the FBI was searching for (among other things) documents related to nuclear weapons.
MAGA world rallied around Trump and demanded that Garland speak and release the search warrant and related documents. They attacked the DOJ as engaging in political intimidation and motivated by partisan animosity, unnecessarily “raiding” the home of a former president.
Example from Senator Ted Cruz:
And the House Judiciary GOP:
Some right-wing social media accounts riled right-wingers by telling them that the FBI would come for them (“If they can do this to a former president, think what they can do to you.”)
August 11, Thursday morning, a man riled up and angry at the FBI attacked an FBI building and was killed by police:
Police shoot dead armed man who tried to breach Ohio FBI building.
The shooter was at the Capitol on January 6 and was one of Truth Social’s most prolific users (Truth Social is Trump’s social media platform). He left behind a long trail of posts supporting Trump on the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social, including a “call to arms” issued shortly after Trump revealed the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“Be ready to kill the enemy,” he posted on Tuesday. “Kill [the FBI] on sight.”
August 11, early afternoon: Merrick Garland made a public announcement. You can watch it here. Excerpts with my commentary:
Since I became Attorney General, I have made clear that the Department of Justice will speak through its court filings and its work.
It seems to me in that first sentence, he was admonishing everyone who has been calling for him to reveal details about the investigation.
Just now, the Justice Department has filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court-approved search that the FBI conducted earlier this week.
“Okay,” he said to Trumpworld. “You wanted me to explain. I will do so by following proper procedures.”
Then he emphasized that the leaks came from Team Trump, not the DOJ:
The Department did not make any public statements on the day of the search. The former President publicly confirmed the search that evening, as is his right.
Next, he debunked the Trump world lie that they had no idea what happened and were not properly informed:
Copies of both the warrant and the FBI property receipt were provided on the day of the search to the former President’s counsel, who was on site during the search.
The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause.
The “property receipt” is a document that federal law requires law enforcement agents to leave with the property owner.
He then repeated things he’d been saying for about a year:
Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor. Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.
All Americans are entitled to the evenhanded application of the law, to due process of the law, and to the presumption of innocence.
Much of our work is by necessity conducted out of the public eye. We do that to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and to protect the integrity of our investigations.
Federal law, longstanding Department rules, and our ethical obligations prevent me from providing further details as to the basis of the search at this time. There are, however, certain points I want you to know.
He took full responsibility for the decision to search Mar-a-Lago, saying he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant and added: “The Department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search, and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”
He was clearly angry at the “recent unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department agents and prosecutors.” He said he will not “stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked.” He refused to answer questions on the grounds that that was all he could say.
The DOJ’s motion to release the warrant and property list is here. Both the DOJ and the court acknowledged that Trump would have a chance to object to the release of the documents. The court ordered the DOJ to confer with Trump’s legal team and, “On or before 3:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 12, 2022,” and “file a certificate of conferral advising whether former President Trump opposes the Government’s motion to unseal.”
Social media exploded with speculation: Would Trump object and make his GOP apologists who had been demanding them look stupid? Or would he release the documents?
That evening, Trump announced that he would “not oppose the release of the documents.”
Notice his appeal to tribalism. He basically says “it’s me against the radical Democrats, so if you’re not a radical Democrat, [the enemy] you will rally to my side.” In other words, he was counting on tribalism and his belief that the GOP will shield him, no matter what. After all, they always have.
In the second part, he talks about his poll numbers, which is a subtle threat to Republicans. They need Trump’s voters. It’s the “conservative dilemma” that Harvard professor Daniel ZIblatt talks about. Conservative economic policies are unpopular, so how do they win elections? The GOP hit on the formula: Weaponize white rage. Invent enemies and “protect” their voters from those “enemies” who are trying to take what belongs to them.
The question remained: Would the GOP rally to Trump’s side? I often said that the problem during Trump’s presidency wasn’t just that we had a lawbreaking president. The larger problem was that a lawbreaking president was being shielded by a major political party.
NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen, doesn’t think so:
Releasing the documents would serve another purpose for Trump as well: It puts him center stage, at the middle of a culture war. It would be Trump against the “radical left Democrats!” Everyone would have to pick sides, and you have America at war and Trump leading the charge against the “radical left Democrats.”
On Friday, the GOP leadership began rallying around Trump, proving that indeed, there is no bridge too far.
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) had a news conference at 930am. Here’s who showed up:
Rep Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said, “Fulsome investigation” is needed into Pres Biden “weaponizing” Justice Dept. against Trump.
Rep Michael Turner (R-OH): “We are very concerned about the method that was used to raid Mar-a-Lago.”
Then the bombshell: Just before 3:00, Trump leaked the search warrant to Breitbart and Fox (where, incidentally, Breitbart did not remove the name of the FBI agents, thus setting them up for harassment or worse). A copy of the warrant is here. We learned that the search warrant related to possible violations of:
- 18 USC 2071 — Concealment, removal or mutilation
- 18 USC 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information (part of the Espionage Act)
- 18 USC 1519 — Destruction, alteration or falsification of records in Federal investigations
Obstruction and espionage.
I was gobsmacked by the idiocy of Trump releasing this information when he didn’t have to. To make it worse, he began floating contradictory “defenses” in the media. One reason defense lawyers advise clients to shut up is that, when making excuses for themselves, they may inadvertently admit that they committed the crime.
Ludicrous Defense #1
First, Trump claimed, in a written statement, that evidence was planted by the FBI:
Ludicrous Defense #2
Then, Trump tried the “Obama did it,” defense:
The NARA promptly debunked that one:
Ludicrous Defense #3
Then he tried this one:
First, it was essentially an admission that he took home classified material (but doesn’t explain why he refused to give them back) and it’s not possible to “automatically declassify” top secret material.
As law professor Steve Vladeck said: “I’m confused: How can Trump be so sure that he declassified the evidence that the FBI planted?”
There is a reason defense lawyers advise their clients to shut up and not talk to the media.
Ludicrous Defense #4
A few silly defenses were floated by Trump’s apologists, like this one:
Ludicrous Defense #5
Breitbart floated the idea that because federal agents waited 3 days from the time the warrant was approved by a judge (Friday) until the warrant was executed (Monday) there clearly hadn’t been much “risk to national security.”
Pro tip: If you have no good defenses, flowing ludicrous defenses in the media is a terrible idea.
Just when things can’t get much crazier . . .
We learned that Team Trump contacted Merrick Garland with a mafia-style threat:
This could explain some of Garland’s anger when he made his announcement. Then this:
Anyone following the news by the end of the week:
