Attorney General Merrick Garland apparently mulled over whether FBI agents should be given the go-ahead to raid the Florida home of former President Donald Trump to retrieve what they referred to as highly classified documents.
Gee, how nice of him to take some time to really think over whether or not he should transform the Federal Bureau of Investigation into a political weapon to use against a former president, all in the name of trying to shut down his chances of running for the White House in 2024.
Glad it wasn’t a quick, spur-of-the-moment decision.
That, of course, was sarcasm.
According to a report from TheBlaze, Garland confirmed that he personally authorized the raid on Mar-a-Lago during a press conference last week. On Monday, a report from the Wall Street Journal came out that revealed Garland spent weeks debating about whether or not such a drastic action should be taken.
And yet, as far as we know, there’s been so much deliberation taking place concerning the contents of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, which happens to have lots and lots of evidence to suggest that the younger son of the president was involved in a scheme to sell political access to his then-vice president father, among many other incriminating items on the hard drive.
According to the WSJ report, the decision to approve the warrant for the raid “had been the subject of weeks of meetings between senior Justice Department and FBI officials.”
The report then went on to frame Garland’s decision as one that was made with careful thought and precision.
“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,” the report said.
But the timetable involved here raises a few critical questions concerning whether the matter was actually serious enough to require such an invasive raid carried out by federal law enforcement agents.
Here’s more from TheBlaze report:
Unfortunately, that question will not be answered any time soon. On Monday, the Justice Department insisted the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant — which also contains the probable cause for the search — should remain under government seal.
Still, attorneys like Alan Dershowitz argue that Garland must answer for why he approved a raid when other means apparently existed to retrieve the items from Mar-a-Lago.
“Why didn’t the Justice Department seek to enforce the subpoena it apparently had issued, rather than seek a search warrant? Was this consistent with the ‘standard practice’ Mr. Garland articulated in his statement — ‘to seek less intrusive alternatives to a search’ whenever possible?” Dershowitz wrote in an essay on Monday.
“Why was the matter handled so differently from the prior investigations of Sandy Berger and Hillary Clinton, who were also suspected of mishandling classified material?” he then went on to ask.
“[U]ntil Mr. Garland fully and specifically answers the hard questions about what appears to be unequal application of rules and practices, ‘what about her emails?’ will be a pertinent question,” he added.
This whole thing should be very concerning to the average American citizen. We’ve witnessed both the FBI and the IRS being used as weapons, or at least being prepared to be used as one in the case of the IRS.
Let’s hope that after the red wave this fall — if one does indeed occur — the Republican Party launches some serious investigations into this raid and that heads roll for what happened.