MICHAEL GOODWIN
Whatever the FBI was looking for in its raid of Donald Trump’s home, it better be big. Really, really big, and important enough to justify this radical and unprecedented action against a former president.
If this were a murder case, even a smoking gun wouldn’t be enough. There would also need to be a corpse.
Because if Democrats didn’t find enough evidence to send Trump to jail, they’ve probably handed him a return trip to the Oval Office.
In a normal case, the burden of proof falls on the government and the suspect is considered innocent until proven guilty.
In this case, the government is guilty of political prosecution until it proves otherwise. Trump is no angel but, just as he is not above the law, neither is he beneath it.
The FBI never recovered the credibility it shattered when former Director James Comey and his band of dirty cops perpetrated the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Comey’s crew lied to get a spying warrant on Trump’s campaign and did its best to tip the election to Hillary Clinton.
It’s not necessary to recount the entire Steele dossier debacle and how the FBI swallowed Clinton’s dirty trick. It is sufficient merely to remember that Clinton set up her own private server as secretary of state, sent and received classified information on it — and got off scot-free.
There was no raid of her house. Instead, there was only Attorney General Loretta Lynch meeting with her old boss, Bill Clinton, on an airport tarmac, followed by a free pass.
And how about Hunter Biden? It’s conceivable the case against him, now supposedly in its fifth year, is not so much an active investigation as a protection racket.
I say that because it’s strange that neither Hunter nor the “big guy” who sits in the White House has complained about how the extremely long probe has cast an unfair cloud over the smartest guy Joe Biden ever met. Nor has there ever been a raid of a Biden home despite overwhelming evidence of an international influence-peddling scheme involving Joe Biden himself.
One result is that Comey’s replacement, Christopher Wray, inspires about as much confidence as Comey.
In their version of justice, everybody is equal. It’s just that some people are more equal than others.
For more than a decade, all those more equal people have been Washington Democrats.
Coincidence? A quick trip down memory lane says otherwise.
After failing to block Trump’s election and after the Russia hoax collapsed, Dems and their Deep State snitches ginned up an impeachment over Ukraine that didn’t come close to deserving a conviction. Nonetheless, it involved an impressive display of teamwork, with the likes of Rep. Adam Schiff and the co-conspirators trying again to overturn the 2016 election.
Foes’ motivation
As one member of the congressional gang actually conceded, they had to convict Trump, or otherwise he would be re-elected. Naturally, the same media that won Pulitzers for spreading the Russia fable did their best again to make a mountain out of the molehill.
All that planning and leaking and blaring headlines fell short of the goal, but no leakers were prosecuted, Schiff & Co. were re-elected and the rogue officials ended up with TV contracts.
The second impeachment, coming after Trump left office, was designed to keep him from ever having another chance at a second term. That, too, fell short.
Next came the one-sided Jan. 6 investigation, which, although it has revealed lots of shameful details about the former president, has been sensationalized in an effort to pin Trump with criminal charges so he can’t run in 2024.
And now, with this jaw-dropping raid, the law-enforcement arm of the Dems, formerly known as the Department of Justice, goes for the jugular. But as it stands now, the raid only makes the swamp look as deep and dirty as ever and bolsters the one man who promised to drain it — Trump.
His fortunes have ebbed lately but unless the raiders produce a bombshell, they’ve given more millions of Americans reason to trust him over anybody else in Washington.
The official story so far, dribbled out anonymously, is that the raid at Mar-a-Lago followed a breakdown in negotiations over classified documents officials believe Trump took when he left the White House.
Last February, the National Archives issued a statement saying, “In mid-January 2022, NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) arranged for the transport from the Trump Mar-a-Lago property in Florida to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained Presidential records, following discussions with President Trump’s representatives in 2021.”
The Washington Post reported that among the items Trump returned was correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a letter former President Barack Obama left for his successor.
The case would seem to have been closed, but officials later insisted the former president still had other documents he had no right to retain. Negotiations stalled and the raid was the government’s response.
If that’s the whole story, it doesn’t pass the smell test. A raid on a former president is so far removed from the ordinary course of events that it needs extraordinary justification.
All we get instead is the claim about Trump keeping federal property. Oddly, nothing’s been said about what specific documents he allegedly kept.
Naturally, there is suspicion the raid was a search for anything that would incriminate Trump in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and his team’s effort to overturn Biden’s election.
That’s certainly possible, but I believe Justice would say so if that were the case.
In the absence of a compelling explanation, I believe it’s possible the raid is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s fallback position for failing to find enough evidence to indict Trump on the riot. Ergo, Garland is offering the archives case as a substitute to his masters in the White House, which could have the same effect of ending Trump’s political career if the AG can get him indicted and convicted.
The Biden connection
If that sounds too conspiratorial, consider this paragraph from a New York Times story in April: “The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself. As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments. And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.”
As I wrote then, it was hilarious to insist Biden hadn’t said this to Garland directly. He didn’t need to because “He can just float it in the Times, through anonymous sources, and be certain Garland will get the point!”
My prediction was that “Biden’s wishes will be Garland’s commands. Thus, the chances of Trump being prosecuted are growing, while Hunter Biden is more likely to escape criminal charges.”
Four months later, those outcomes look even more likely.
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