A Raid on a Political Opponent is Political Until Proven Otherwise

By: Daniel Greenfield

After the Mar-a-Lago raid, the same familiar voices are once again insisting that we ought to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt.

That’s Un-American.

(These same folks don’t think the police officers in the George Floyd drug overdose case or the Breonna Taylor case, currently being lynched by Biden’s racist DOJ deserve that.)

The government doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt in our criminal justice system, the accused do. And there’s a big difference between respecting the integrity of the average law enforcement officer on the ground (which, for whatever it’s worth, I think stands above that of the average politician, but is certainly far from incorruptible) and the system that dispatches him and tasks him with certain missions. Lefties and Never Trumpers tiresomely continue to conflate attacks on law enforcement with a lack of credulity for a politicized system that calls the shots.

A political appointee, like AG Garland, approving a raid on a political opponent deserves zero of the benefit of the doubt and all the suspicion that can be mustered. The same would be true if a GOP AG had approved a raid on Hillary Clinton for that matter. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of the target, a raid on a political opponent should be assumed to be political until proven otherwise. And there would be a really high barrier to proving that going after your political opponents is apolitical.

AG Garland and his people had a way out of this. They could have turned the whole matter over to an independent investigation, even now they could appoint a special master to oversee the products of the raid. They’ve refused to do that. Those are not the actions of devoted civil servants following an investigation wherever it goes. They’re the work of political hacks looking to maintain control at all costs.

In China and Russia, the government gets the benefit of the doubt. Americans suspect their government. That’s the American way. It’s Un-American not to.

The original story told through the media was that the FBI raid was about retrieving documents that the National Archives wanted in its custody. As I wrote at the time, that wasn’t the reason, that was the pretext.

And AG Garland is admitting as much by trying to keep the affidavit classified after agreeing to declassify the search warrant.

The Justice Department said in court documents Monday that it opposes the release of the FBI affidavit used to justify the search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s primary residence at Mar-a-Lago.

Because the documents are classified? Nope.

In Monday’s filing, prosecutors indicated that the affidavit contained sensitive information regarding the testimony of witnesses in the investigation, adding later they feared that releasing the requested documents would “chill” the future testimony of other potential witnesses.

While the Justice Department did not oppose the release of the search warrant last week, the department argued Monday in a court filing to the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida that the affidavit should remain sealed “to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security.”

The investigation isn’t about returning documents. It’s about maintaining their informants and keeping a political investigation going.

But while the Justice Department has “carefully considered whether the affidavit can be released subject to redactions,” it said in Monday’s court filing that “the redactions necessary to mitigate harms to the integrity of the investigation would be so extensive as to render the remaining unsealed text devoid of meaningful content, and the release of such a redacted version would not serve any public interest.”

That is some statement. Everything has to be kept secret, not because it’s classified information being kept hidden from the enemy, but because it’s being kept secret from the target of its investigation, Trump and his associates.

If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps,” the department wrote in its filing.

It’s all about the next steps. The raid was a means, not an end, to gather material for a political witch hunt by the Biden administration.

Justice Department officials have defended the Mar-a-Lago search as a necessary step approved by Mr. Garland himself. People familiar with the Justice Department’s approach have said a primary goal of the search was to ensure the security of highly sensitive national-security documents after the Trump team didn’t relinquish them and amid concerns that the security of the material at Mar-a-Lago had been put at risk.

Justice Department officials have just admitted that’s a bunch of lies.

As The Point previously discussed, the warrant they bore allowed them to pretty much take everything, giving them the right to search most of Mar-a-Lago and to take anything potentially classified, anything near anything classified, and anything potentially covered under the presidential records act.

That’s the definition of a fishing expedition. Now a few of the fish had to be thrown back.

Passports belonging to Donald Trump have been returned to the former president after last week’s FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, a Justice Department official told NBC News on Monday.

The FBI acknowledged it had had the passports the same day Trump said on his social media platform that FBI agents who conducted the search on Aug. 8 took them.

In a statement on Truth Social, Trump said agents “stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else.” He did not provide further details or specify whether the travel documents were personal or government passports. (Presidents receive diplomatic passports when they take office.)

A Justice Department official said Trump’s passports have been returned.

They didn’t need the passports obviously. But how much else did they take inappropriately?

The whole story that this was a clean search and the only things taken in the raid were legitimate has fallen apart. It’s insupportable. They clearly took everything and the kitchen sink.

But that’s routine for FBI raids. Look at the US Private Vaults case which is still dragging on.

FBI agents raided the U.S. Private Vaults facility in March 2021, and they rummaged through the contents of every box in the vault. The government attempted to justify the raid on the ground that U.S. Private Vaults—the business—was being charged with federal crimes, but none of the individual box holders were charged. And the warrant authorizing the search specifically said that the government was not authorized to conduct a criminal search of the individual security deposit boxes. Yet, nonetheless, the government opened every box, made a video record of the contents, and even opened sealed envelopes and held documents up to the camera.

The government cannot search your private property when it cannot even say what you might have done wrong. That’s what the Fourth Amendment means when it protects the right to be “secure” in your “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” So, in May, IJ sued on behalf of box holders Paul and Jennifer Snitko, Joseph Ruiz, and Tyler Gothier.

On the eve of the lawsuit, the government doubled down on its constitutional violations by moving to take the contents of hundreds of boxes through civil forfeiture.

People have had cash, jewelry, and memorabilia seized through civil forfeiture.

Despite the orders in the search warrant, the FBI is alleging that they have rights to the over $86 million in cash that was confiscated during the raid. There are millions more in assets customers of the vault company stored away including jewelry, watches, heirlooms, and other valued memorabilia.

Along with the cash, there are thousands of gold and silver bars, Rolex watches, and jewelry with valuable gems and stones that the FBI wants to confiscate. In one box, there are over $1.3 million in poker chips from the popular Las Vegas casino, Aria.

The contents of 175 boxes are in the process of being returned to their rightful owners, and the FBI has already given back the contents of at least 75 boxes. With the remaining boxes, it’s not clear who owns the contents yet.

The Feds returned some items, others were lost.

Next, the agent opens the letter taped to the top of the box, which contains all the necessary information to identify the box’s owner—identified in legal filings as “Linda R.,” an 80-year-old woman who had stored a significant portion of her retirement savings in Box 8309.

The agent keeps digging anyway, eventually tearing open a heavy-duty envelope that contains an unknown number of what appear to be gold coins.

As the ransacking of Box 8309 continues, the video appears to show at least one of Linda’s coins falling to the ground. According to an amended complaint filed last week, the search of the box “was conducted in such a shambolic and disorganized manner that it is no surprise that items were misplaced, lost, or worse.”

This is the reality of how Fed raids work even when there’s no political bias or other agenda. Once you unleash the government, it doesn’t stop where you expect it to.

That’s why only fools and totalitarians go down this path.

(FrontPageMag.com)