Mar-a-Lago Raid IS THE MOST FASCIST ACTION AN ADMINISTRATION HAS EVER ENTERTAINED AGAINST AN OPPONENT!

Dershowitz on Mar-a-Lago raid: Whatever happened to a subpoena?

ED MORRISSEY Aug 09, 2022 at HotAir:

Mary Altaffer

A good question, and from an always-provocative source. Alan Dershowitz lost his friends by defending Donald Trump, both formally in an impeachment trial and more routinely as a pundit. That removes any “statement against political interests” cachet this argument might otherwise have, but it does point out that Merrick Garland had more choices as Attorney General than to raid the home of a former president and likely presidential candidate to be or to ignore Trump altogether

Why not first subpoena the documents in question — if indeed that was the real purpose of this raid?

The decision by the Justice Department to conduct a full-scale morning raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Largo home does not seem justified, based on what we know as of now. If it is true that the basis of the raid was the former president’s alleged removal of classified material from the White House, that would constitute a double standard of justice.

There were no raids, for example, on the homes of Hillary Clinton or former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger for comparable allegations of mishandling official records in the recent past. Previous violations of the Presidential Records Act typically have been punished by administrative fines, not criminal prosecution. Perhaps there are legitimate reasons for applying a different standard to Trump’s conduct, but those are not readily obvious at this stage.

The more appropriate action would have been for a grand jury to issue a subpoena for any boxes of material that were seized and for Trump’s private safe that was opened. That would have given Trump’s lawyers the opportunity to challenge the subpoena on various grounds — that some of the material was not classified; that previous classified material was declassified by Trump; that other documents may be covered by various privileges, such as executive or lawyer-client.

One reason to conduct a raid would be to ensure the preservation of the records. A few days before the raid, reports swirled (so to speak) about Trump clogging White House toilets by flushing documents rather than retaining them under the PRA. Axios even has pictures about what Maggie Haberman claims are photographic records of Trump’s efforts to use the “telltale toilet.”

Trump denies it, which one can take or leave. In this case, though, no one was alleging that Trump was destroying the records — and he had been at least negotiating over their status for the past several months. Plus, Dershowitz notes, Trump was a thousand miles away at the time the FBI served the warrant and conducted the raid:

Searches and seizures should only be used when subpoenas are inappropriate because of the risk of evidence destruction. It is important to note that Trump himself was 1,000 miles away when the FBI’s search and seizure occurred. It would have been impossible, therefore, for him to destroy subpoenaed evidence, especially if the subpoena demanded immediate production. If he or anyone else destroyed evidence that was subject to a subpoena, that would be a far more serious crime than what the search warrant seems to have alleged. It is unlikely that there is a basis for believing that the search warrant was sought because of a legitimate fear that subpoenaed evidence would be destroyed.

That doesn’t sound as though the DoJ was concerned about document destruction. That is one reason, Dershowitz argues, that this raid appears to be overly aggressive and potentially “unjust”:

Neutral, objective justice must not only be done: it must be seen to be done.

For zealous Trump haters, anything done to Trump is justified. For zealous Trump lovers, nothing done to him is ever justified. For the majority of moderate, thoughtful Americans, however, the Justice Department’s raid likely seems — at least at this point in time — to be unjust or needlessly confrontational.

That seems especially true when — as Dershowitz points out — Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray had a potentially effective and far less confrontational option available. Why not try the subpoena first, with enough specificity to ensure that serious charges could develop if Trump attempted to destroy the documents?

Dershowitz agrees with those cheering the raid that presidents should not be above the law, but notes the risks about putting them below it:

It is true that a president or former president is not above the law — but neither should he or she be below the law. Precedents established in relation to Democrats must be equally applied to Republicans. On the face of it, this standard has not been met here.

On that point, Jonathan Turley points out yet another precedent shattered in the raid:

While the Presidential Records Act requires the preservation of such documents (and the removal was likely in violation of that law), it is relatively weak on enforcement elements. As shown in prior administrations, presidents have long chaffed at both the limitations or disclosures imposed by the Act.

The 1978 law requires that any memos, letters, emails and other documents related to the president’s duties be preserved for retention by the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of an administration. That includes Section 2071 which states that anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys … any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited … in any public office” can be fined or face up to three years in prison if convicted.

Those laws have never be used against a former president.The allegation of the removal of classified material can trigger other laws beyond the PRA that bar the removal of such material without authorization and without proper protections. Those laws were raised with regard to former FBI Director James Comey removing FBI material and then leaking information to the press. Comey clearly violated federal law but was not prosecuted.

In the case of President Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser Sandy Berger, the violations involved stuffing classified material into his pants and socks to remove them from the archives and to retrieve them later. Berger was spared any jail time and allowed to plead to a misdemeanor. He did not even loss his security clearance permanently and was given a three-year suspension. Likewise,  General David Petraeus was accused of giving access to classified information to his alleged lover and was also given a generous plea.

Both Dershowitz and Turley warn against jumping to conclusions regarding the purposes of the raid. As Andy McCarthy wrote earlier today, it may very well be that the search warrant targeted the records as just a predicate for a completely different allegation of criminal conduct, likely tied to the January 6 riot. In the meantime, though, we can still point out how Garland needlessly escalated this — if indeed it’s about the classified material Trump may or may not still hold.

“Nancy Pelosi readies the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and its $80 billion to add 87,000 agents to the IRS!”

Priorities: House progressives torpedo police-funding bill while adding 87,000 IRS agents

Democrats’ pitch in the midterms: More IRS audits to target you, and fewer police to protect you. What could go wrong?

As Nancy Pelosi readies the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and its $80 billion to add 87,000 agents to the IRS, Punchbowl reports that progressive Democrats have succeeded in killing the police-funding bill:

The House is scheduled to return Friday to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, setting up a big win for President Joe Biden and the Democrats.

But Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders are unlikely to move ahead with a series of bills to boost police funding, according to lawmakers and aides.

While vulnerable Frontliners and Democratic moderates are pressing the leadership for a floor vote on these measures, opposition from progressives and the Congressional Black Caucus has derailed this effort.

Progressives and the CBC were concerned about the lack of accountability language in the bills before the House left for the August recess, so a floor vote was delayed. The hope among Democrats at that time was they could work out their differences and take up the measures when the House returned to take up a reconciliation.

But it’s not happening apparently. And it’s not at all clear it can happen in September either, despite Pelosi’s support for the effort.

Supposedly, House Democrats planned to pass the police funding along with the so-called “assault weapons” ban. That plan reportedly fell apart late last month, only to be revived momentarily and pushed off until after Labor Day. The House passed its AWB bill on July 29 while still promising to iron out the police funding.

Now, however, it appears that progressives have reneged on their pledge to moderates on police funding. Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal told Punchbowl that she didn’t want to step on the Democrats’ message of unity, or something:

“We have communicated to all of leadership exactly where we are. We communicated it last week … that there simply wasn’t the votes. It would be a very, very divisive thing to do. We need to be disciplined as Democrats and not step on our success, not snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Let’s focus on this massive victory for the American people this week.”

This could be a little bit of payback. After months of holding the bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage to the $5 trillion Build Back Better plan, progressives finally allowed a vote on the former while being promised a vote on the latter by moderates. That didn’t work out for Jayapal at the time, and she’s likely looking for a chance to stick it to the moderates this time around.

If this is the opportunity progressives choose, though … yikes. Americans are facing generational-high crime rates, especially in the cities, while progressive efforts to defund police and roll back criminal prosecutions worsen their lived experience. Rather than take a moment for a slam-dunk way to protect at-risk incumbents in this cycle, House Democrats will instead spend an enormous amount of money to double the IRS and demand greater intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans.

That’s quite the juxtaposition: funding tax audits rather than crime prevention. It should pay off handsomely, too … for Republicans, assuming they publicize this choice widely.

Nancy Pelosi….The House Evil Of Our Century!

Priorities: House progressives torpedo police-funding bill while adding 87,000 IRS agents

ED MORRISSEY Aug 09, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Democrats’ pitch in the midterms: More IRS audits to target you, and fewer police to protect you. What could go wrong?

As Nancy Pelosi readies the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and its $80 billion to add 87,000 agents to the IRS, Punchbowl reports that progressive Democrats have succeeded in killing the police-funding bill:

The House is scheduled to return Friday to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, setting up a big win for President Joe Biden and the Democrats.

But Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders are unlikely to move ahead with a series of bills to boost police funding, according to lawmakers and aides.

While vulnerable Frontliners and Democratic moderates are pressing the leadership for a floor vote on these measures, opposition from progressives and the Congressional Black Caucus has derailed this effort.

Progressives and the CBC were concerned about the lack of accountability language in the bills before the House left for the August recess, so a floor vote was delayed. The hope among Democrats at that time was they could work out their differences and take up the measures when the House returned to take up a reconciliation.

But it’s not happening apparently. And it’s not at all clear it can happen in September either, despite Pelosi’s support for the effort.

Supposedly, House Democrats planned to pass the police funding along with the so-called “assault weapons” ban. That plan reportedly fell apart late last month, only to be revived momentarily and pushed off until after Labor Day. The House passed its AWB bill on July 29 while still promising to iron out the police funding.

Now, however, it appears that progressives have reneged on their pledge to moderates on police funding. Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal told Punchbowl that she didn’t want to step on the Democrats’ message of unity, or something:

“We have communicated to all of leadership exactly where we are. We communicated it last week … that there simply wasn’t the votes. It would be a very, very divisive thing to do. We need to be disciplined as Democrats and not step on our success, not snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Let’s focus on this massive victory for the American people this week.”

This could be a little bit of payback. After months of holding the bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage to the $5 trillion Build Back Better plan, progressives finally allowed a vote on the former while being promised a vote on the latter by moderates. That didn’t work out for Jayapal at the time, and she’s likely looking for a chance to stick it to the moderates this time around.

If this is the opportunity progressives choose, though … yikes. Americans are facing generational-high crime rates, especially in the cities, while progressive efforts to defund police and roll back criminal prosecutions worsen their lived experience. Rather than take a moment for a slam-dunk way to protect at-risk incumbents in this cycle, House Democrats will instead spend an enormous amount of money to double the IRS and demand greater intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans.

That’s quite the juxtaposition: funding tax audits rather than crime prevention. It should pay off handsomely, too … for Republicans, assuming they publicize this choice widely.

Dem Stench IN ACTION battling Our Trump!

August 8, 2022

Circling the bowl: NYT reporter Maggie Haberman publishes purported Trump toilet pictures

By Monica Showalter at American Thinker:

Is nothing too gross for Trump-hating Democrats?

The latest dump comes from Russian hoax–writing Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman, according to Axios biggie Mike Allen:

Remember our toilet scoop in Axios AM earlier this year? Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book about former President Trump will report that White House residence staff periodically found wads of paper clogging a toilet — and believed the former president, a notorious destroyer of Oval Office documents, was the flusher.

Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal.

Trump denied it and called Haberman, whose New York Times coverage he follows compulsively, a “maggot.”

• Well, it turns out there are photos. And here they are, published for the first time.

Haberman — who obtained the photos recently — shared them with us ahead of the Oct. 4 publication of her book, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.”
A Trump White House source tells her the photo on the left shows a commode in the White House.
The photo on the right is from an overseas trip, according to the source.
Since the toilet pictures are right in our faces, what I see in this toilet picture are what look like a few doodled names, not official records.  Is a president no longer permitted to jot down doodles with names without their becoming official records?

All of this is assuming the pictures are genuine, and the scrawled notes in the toilet actually did come from Trump, who, clean freak that he is, somehow left a lot of unflushed toilets around for staff to photograph.

Here’s the question I have:

If the violation was so severe that official records were being destroyed and the staffer was so motivated by concern about the matter, despite working for Trump, why didn’t that poop-minded creature looking into other people’s toilets fish out the errant document and preserve it as evidence?  You know, for patriotism, the call of duty?  That would have made the notes a helluva lot more damning and persuasive as evidence than these gross photographs, which contain no proof that the scrawly doodles even contained any content, or that Trump wrote the scrawls, or that Trump flushed the notes, or that Trump was discarding official documents.  How do we know that this “official document” wasn’t tossed into a wastebasket, and then placed in a very generic-looking toilet outside the White House as some kind of flushed document in a supposedly republic-threatening cover-up?  There wasn’t exactly a chain of custody here.

Seriously, if you wanted to Get Trump, as a crummy little loyalty-challenged, plotting White House staffer — looking at you, Cassidy Hutchinson — why would you let the evidence be flushed away after going to the trouble of whipping out your cell phone camera and taking multiple photographs of the contents of the toilet bowl?

This is gross.

Naturally, Maggie Haberman asked no such questions, while Allen covered for her, claiming that she acquired the photographs “recently” but just in time for the publication of the new book she’s shilling.  Allen likely said that to shield Haberman from charges that she sat on information for more than a year in order to be able to include it in what will undoubtedly be a very profitable book, when it could have done the “most good” if it had been made public earlier.

If so, and that’s questionable, perhaps the newly disloyal Hutchinson could have been the source.  But if so, why would Trump allow a low-level female staffer into the same bathroom he used in order to inspect its unflushed contents?

The idea that someone could have taken these pictures and at long last finally come out of the woodwork with them, after sitting on them for a year and a half, even as all the January 6 hoopla was going on, and even as the left’s howlings about destroyed documents have already been through one or two news cycles already, is strange stuff.  Why didn’t the person brandish these toilet pictures earlier, and better still, come out in public with a face and name, if the toilet activity was so genuine that the republic could be threatened?

See the stupidity here?

It’s all dubious, same as Haberman’s other reportage, which included publishing the Russian collusion allegations, which saw her rewarded handsomely for it in the form of a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.  Former Timesman Tom Kuntz, now editor of RealClearInvestigations, has powerfully written about just how problematic that prize actually was.

With a record like that, we are now supposed to believe  Haberman and her latest toilet bowl poop scoop?

Call it circling the bowl.  This person is desperate to Get Trump, will stoop to even the toilet level, in order to sell a book.

Today’s Dems, Like Other Fascists, LIE BY HABIT AND DESIGN!

 AUGUST 9, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN FBI, JOE BIDEN, MERRICK GARLAND

MOST TRANSPARENT LIE OF THE DAY

The White House leaked to its media adjunct that Biden and his aides didn’t know about the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago until they read about it on Twitter:

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This claim is laughable. There is no way that Merrick Garland authorized a raid on the home of a former president and likely 2024 candidate without the express approval, likely in writing, of his boss, Joe Biden. As so often happens, one is left asking: how dumb do they think we are?

STEVE adds—When you’ve lost . . . (check notes) . . . Andrew Cuomo!?!?:

Did Gangster Biden Arrange President Trump’s Home Invasion?

DeSantis: Trump raid demonstrates “weaponization of federal agencies”

ED MORRISSEY Aug 09, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/John Raoux

Does it? It certainly seems that way, perhaps especially given the Department of Justice’s pattern of recent conduct. Still, this statement from Ron DeSantis about the raid on Donald Trump’s residence last night puts him ahead of potential developments that might leave him out over his skis, legally speaking.

Politically speaking, however, DeSantis’ instincts are spot-on:

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Legally speaking, this assumes facts not yet in evidence. We don’t know yet what purpose the raid has, or even what investigation it might be serving. Is it about the illegal retention of classified material? January 6? Trump’s business conduct or some form of tax issue? We don’t know yet, and we probably won’t for a while.

If this turns out to be nothing more than a trawl-back of documents, it’s going to stink to high heaven. But that’s still an if at this point until the DoJ and/or Trump himself publish the search warrant and the inventory seized at Mar-a-Lago.

Politically speaking, this is smart strategy for DeSantis, whose momentum may have gotten halted momentarily by the Department of Justice’s raid. Trump’s supporters are now fired up all over again over this unprecedented step, which may yet be justified but still represents a significant rupture in the norms around presidential relations. It certainly smells like a political move, either to kneecap Trump ahead of the 2024 cycle or to make him the center of the upcoming midterms as a way to alleviate political criticism of Joe Biden. In that sense, the timing on this is alone a point to question, especially if it turns out to be predicated on nothing more than the dispute with the National Archives.

By getting out in front of this with his accusations against “the Regime,” DeSantis puts himself on the front line of political attack. Trump is seen as the GOP’s biggest fighter, and now that the fight has turned personal, the MAGA caucus will surge back to Trump. DeSantis has to demonstrate that he’s as much a fighter as Trump against the “deep state,” and perhaps an even more effective one. That was DeSantis’ point in suspending State Attorney Andrew Warren last week, after all — to show that he could dismantle a “deep state” more effectively than anyone else, Trump included.

Even if it turns out that the DoJ can make a good case for raiding Trump’s home, the political risk to DeSantis is minimal. Having the DoJ raid the home of a former president who also happens to have a significant chance of running against the current president to which the Attorney General reports looks very banana-republic-esque, no matter how one cuts it. The political blowback here also serves a good purpose in making sure that future such actions carry heavy disincentives and are only deployed in the most unavoidable circumstances.

Biden’s Fascist Gangsters Raid A President’s Home!? A First In Presidential History!

Trump raid: What’s the Biden/Garland endgame?

ED MORRISSEY Aug 09, 2022 8:24 AM ET

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

There has to be one, right? The FBI doesn’t just go to a federal judge for a search warrant for the home of a former president on its own — and presumably a federal judge doesn’t just casually sign off on such a request, either. NBC’s Ken Dilanian urges caution in jumping to conclusions at this point, but states the obvious when saying that this had to have gotten approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland prior to the raid on Mar-a-Lago:

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Dilanian’s correct that it’s no small matter to get a federal judge to sign off on a warrant, let alone one targeting a former president who might run for office next cycle. That would, or at least it should, set off all sorts of red flags for a judge. This point got made repeatedly on social media for a good reason — it’s true. Since we haven’t yet seen the warrant, we can’t assess what case the FBI and the Department of Justice put together to authorize this warrant. One has to presume as a starting point that the federal judge saw this warrant application and the proposed search of Donald Trump’s residence as a necessary and appropriate action.

Some of the early reporting doesn’t make a lot of sense in that context, however. As John noted last night, the early leaks to reporters said that this wasn’t about January 6 or any of Trump’s other woes, but about the illegal holding of classified material. The National Archives has been in conflict with Trump ever since he left office, accusing the former president of retaining records subject to the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA). When they retrieved 15 boxes of material in February by mutual agreement, they discovered classified material and got the FBI and DoJ involved in the dispute, appropriately so given the statutes governing the handling of classified material.

Getting a search warrant on the basis that Trump was still holding other classified material seems tricky after the first negotiated settlement, especially if intermediate steps weren’t taken first — like suing Trump and getting a civil order to force Trump to return those documents. Such a search-warrant request would require, as Dilanian says, a specific and detailed description of what the FBI wanted to find, followed by a post-search inventory of everything seized. The DoJ could have argued that such a step would have prompted the destruction of those documents, though, and a federal judge may have been sympathetic enough to that claim to authorize the raid yesterday to get the records back.

But if that’s all this is — a dispute over handling classified material — the DoJ had better prepare itself for major blowback. Garland’s predecessors rather infamously refused to prosecute former Secretary of State and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for the exact same crime while she ran against Trump, and perhaps on an even greater scale. Remember the infamous server that Clinton “wiped, with a cloth” before reluctantly handing it over to the FBI? That had thousands of classified documents in digital form, including a handful classified at Top Secret-Compartmented, the highest range of protection for the nation’s secrets. The decision not to pursue charges in that case blew up into a major scandal for the Barack Obama administration and especially Loretta Lynch and James Comey, who would go on to other failures.

Perhaps the DoJ doesn’t plan to prosecute Trump over this either, but just wanted the materials back. If Trump wasn’t cooperating with the DoJ on compliance with the PRA, that also might have given a federal judge good reason to sign off on this warrant. Former presidents are not above the law, after all.

However, that’s also a bit cute when it comes to real-world consequences. Raiding the home of a former president of the opposing party to the current administration is an unprecedented act. It is guaranteed to blow up the political equilibrium and create backfire in several different directions. Tossing that gasoline into the current political fire just to force the return of some documents and dropping the matter afterward would be very strange indeed.

Not to mention self-destructive. Republicans who might have felt a little complacent riding a red wave in November have suddenly gotten angry and energized all over again and are accusing Garland and Joe Biden of conducting a political vendetta, and of setting a precedent they will not enjoy living under:

One source said House Republicans would consider creating something like the Church Committee, which investigated a broad range of governmental misconduct by intelligence agencies during the mid 1970s. That select Senate panel, chaired by the late Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), was tasked with looking into “illegal, improper or unethical activities” by any government agency.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee and another Trump ally, demanded during an appearance on Fox News that Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray meet with lawmakers to explain the reasons for the raid. The House will be in session on Friday to vote on the Democrats’ reconciliation bill.

Here’s Jordan:

“Merrick Garland, Chris Wray, come to the House Judiciary Committee this Friday and answer our questions about this action today, which has never happened in American history. What was on the warrant? What were you really doing? What are you looking for? Why not talk to President Trump and have him give you the information you’re after? This is unbelievable.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) suggested President Joe Biden “is playing with fire by using a document dispute to get the @TheJusticeDept to persecute a likely future election opponent.”

“Because one day what goes around is going to come around,” Rubio added.

This kind of reaction is very predictable, given the unprecedented nature of this raid. Biden may not be strategic enough to see it, but Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray certainly are. They had to know that they were buying years of misery with this operation, which prompts the question of what they had in mind conducting it. It has to have value enough to outstrip the current blowback, not to mention re-fueling the fire of Trump’s presidential prospects, which had begun to fade in polling of late.

It can’t just be an attempt to prosecute Trump under the PRA or statutes involving handling of classified material, as news reports said last night. That’s a non-starter, especially with the multiple refusals to prosecute Hillary Clinton under similar conditions. There’s either something bigger at stake here … or Garland and Wray just made a volatile situation a lot worse than it needed to be.

Where does that leave us? Somewhere in the middle of Donald Rumsfeld’s famous “known unknowns and unknown unknowns.” Until we see the warrants and the inventory of materials produced, we won’t grasp exactly what the DoJ had in mind with this raid. At this point, it had better be something big enough to justify the seeming banana-republic tactics taken last night. Keep your powder dry until then, but stay tuned.

Biden’s Dem Fascists Raid Trump Home In Florida? Such An Assault Against a President IS A FIRST IN AMERICAN HISTORY!

AUGUST 8, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

THE FBI RAIDS TRUMP [UPDATED AGAIN]

The New York Times reports that the FBI has executed a search warrant on Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

Former President Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home and had broken open a safe — an account that, if accurate, would be a dramatic escalation in the various investigations into the former president.

The FBI has openly become an arm of the Democratic Party. This will not serve the Bureau well in years to come. But what was the pretext for the raid?

The search, according to two people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, after he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.

Mr. Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action being taken to retrieve them.

That is classic NYT “news” reporting. The Times cites the fact that Trump took a while to send documents to the National Archives–which he did some time ago–as justification for today’s raid.

“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Mr. Trump said, maintaining it was an effort to stop him from running for president in 2024. “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.”

“They even broke into my safe!” he wrote. “What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”

Good question, although, to be fair, the FBI had a search warrant issued by a compliant authority. But anyone who wonders whether the FBI’s leaders should be identified as Democrats hasn’t been paying attention.

Trump is certainly correct that all of this–the absurd “January 6” committee hearings, threats of criminal prosecution, and now this raid on his Florida home–is driven by the 2024 election. The Democrats impeached Trump twice, but that didn’t work. He leads Joe Biden in every 2024 presidential preference poll I have seen. So now they want to up the ante by arresting or indicting him on some trumped-up charge. That this is 100% about presidential politics, no one doubts.

I think this is unfortunate not only because it betrays our status as a banana republic, as Trump said, but also because it increases the likelihood that Republicans will rally behind Trump and he will be the Republican nominee in 2024. Given the disaster of the Biden administration, many think the Republican nominee will be a shoo-in in 2024, no matter who he or she might be. I disagree. I think that Trump might drag behind him so much baggage that he could be the only Republican likely to lose in 2024–not to Joe Biden, obviously, but to whomever the Dems nominate.

If I thought the Democrats were this well-organized, I would suspect that today’s raid was part of their plot to ensure that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024.

UPDATE: Crowds of Trump supporters are gathering at Mar-a-Lago:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1556819844322017281&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F08%2Fthe-fbi-raids-trump.php&sessionId=3f769485a206ffd311551861483e83b17994c1d3&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=b7df0f50e1ec1%3A1659558317797&width=550px

I don’t know whether the Democrats are trying to provoke a civil war, but they apparently intend to send President Trump to prison. That might do it.

MORE: Robert Spencer writes: “End of the Republic.”

When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s home on Monday, a key aspect of what made the United States of America great and free has been lost, and likely cannot be recovered. … [B]itter political opponents throughout the history of the republic have never before used the government’s own mechanisms of justice to do injustice to their foes. Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their henchmen have brought America to a new phase of its history, and it is not likely to be one that is marked by respect for the rule of law or defense of the rights of individual citizens. Instead, we are entering an ugly age of authoritarianism, in which the brute force of the state is used to bend the people to the will of the tyrant.
***
The FBI that was heavily involved in trying to frame and destroy Trump in the Russian Collusion hoax is now trying once again to destroy him, apparently by claiming that he improperly took classified material from the White House. They never cared when Hillary Clinton misused classified material on a grand scale; what is the difference? …
***
Merrick Garland recently signaled that something like this was in the offing, when he emphasized that no one was above the law and anyone could be prosecuted. No one is above that law, that is, except Hillary Clinton, and Hunter Biden, and all the FBI officials who have been implicated in the Russian Collusion hoax, and all the other Leftists who have escaped and will continue to escape prosecution because they hold what the elites consider to be acceptable political opinions.
***
The lesson is clear: in America today, in the corrupt kleptocracy of Joe Biden, you have to have the right opinions. Then all doors will open for you and you can even break laws with impunity, and have no fear of prosecution. But if you dare to dissent from the opinions of the elites, prepare to be hounded by the new super-IRS and the weaponized FBI, and you’ll face raids, and prison, and who knows what else is coming.

Sad but true.

MORE: Kevin McCarthy puts Merrick Garland and the FBI on notice:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=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%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1556807790433271809&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F08%2Fthe-fbi-raids-trump.php&sessionId=3f769485a206ffd311551861483e83b17994c1d3&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=b7df0f50e1ec1%3A1659558317797&width=550px

Are Those Fascists Running CNN Still In Business?

August 8, 2022

The Fall of CNN: A Cautionary Tale

By John Green at American Thinker:

If you want to see what a company committing suicide looks like, look no further than CNN. Its profits have slipped below $1B for the first time in years and its viewership has fallen below 640K — about a quarter of the 2.4 million nightly viewers of Big Bang Theory reruns. CNN+ was supposed to be the company’s path to future riches. It was cancelled only one month after its launch — much to the delight of Chris Wallace critics. It never occurred to the brain trust at CNN that if you can’t get people to watch your drivel for free, getting them to pay for it may not be in the cards.

CNN should have learned that around the clock anti-Trump coverage is not a sustainable programing strategy for a company that claims to be a news network.

CNN’s viewers are leaving, and its revenue is following them out the door. Apparently, it was beyond Jeff Zucker’s understanding of the industry that you can’t sell time on a network that nobody watches. It turns out advertisers are a bunch of greedy capitalists that don’t understand the social importance of the work being done by the Commie News Network.

But those problems are all temporary. CNN has hired Chris Licht to fix it. As his first order of business, he has promised that the network is going to be much more balanced in its coverage. That means that Jim Acosta, Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, and Jeffrey “Hands Under the Table” Tobin are now going to be actual news reporters. They’ll be reporting the facts rather than spinning narratives — and somehow, they’re going to acquire these new skills without going to a multi-year remedial training program.

The reality facing Licht is that CNN has spent 20+ years trashing its own credibility. Getting it back is going to take a lot more than a declaration from the new CEO.

CNN led the charge in attacking George W. Bush for eight years. Remember the “Bush lied; people died” mantra repeated endlessly? When the country needed to come together to fight a common enemy, CNN and the Democrats did everything possible to divide us.

The network followed that with eight years of willful blindness about the Obama administration — calling it the most scandal-free administration in history. But it only seemed that way because CNN didn’t bother to cover Fast and Furious, Benghazi, spying on journalists, DoJ corruption, NSA domestic spying, Obamacare deception, and IRS weaponization. “Scandal free” has about as much connection to President Obama as “credibility” does to CNN.

CNN then moved on to Donald Trump, with five years of talking about nothing but Russian collusion. Adam Schiff spent so much time on the network that his image is burned into the pixels of the dozen or so TVs actually tuned to CNN. But there was something CNN left out of its coverage. The only person actually colluding with Russia was Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump. The talking heads forgot to say anything about that, even though it was obvious from the beginning.

Finally, “the most trusted name in news” has treated us to almost three years of propaganda to drag Joe Biden over the inaugural finish line and keep him there. They accomplished this feat by never mentioning Hunter “Bagman” Biden’s laptop without also including the word “disinformation” in the same sentence.

For a business that trades in credibility, the CNN crew sold theirs on the cheap. They sacrificed it all to push a socialist ideology that is destined to fail, and to get the most lackluster candidate in history inaugurated as President. What they got is a President who is so bad that it’s now obvious to everyone but the most delusional, that CNN was a significant player in one of the biggest hoaxes ever played on the American people. Now Chis Licht is asking Americans to trust him — CNN has changed.

So, how is Licht going to make CNN credible again? That’s not going to be easy, but he’s working on it.

Last month Licht was at the U.S. Capitol courting Republicans to come back on CNN as guests, because he needs the patina of ideological objectivity that only a few RINOs can provide. Actually “courting” is not the right word. He was begging. Part of his pitch was to assure Republicans that they can trust him to be treated fairly and with respect — says the guy from the network with no credibility.

I expect Liz Cheney to be the only Republican accepting his offer. Of course, she’s not interested in giving vital information to the American people, or even helping CNN with its credibility problem. For her it’s a job interview, because by now even she must see that Trump hatred isn’t enough to get reelected — not even with an endorsement from her daddy, Dick “Deadeye” Cheney.

Eventually Licht may learn that credibility is not something that can be acquired through begging. Its value is far too high to be given away like spare change at the street corner. It must be earned. Licht will not have even started earning it back until there are mass terminations among the highly-paid help at CNN. And no, a token Fredo termination is not enough.

CNN’s only chance to survive is to rebuild credibility with its audience — which is hard to do when the audience isn’t watching anymore. I’m not even sure if it’s possible. It may be, but I’m pretty sure that Licht isn’t going to pull it off.

There are a great many industries that depend on credibility, even though they may not realize it:

• News
• Law enforcement
• Science
• Medicine

CNN is a cautionary tale that they should all be paying attention to.

A law enforcement agency cannot convict criminals if the citizens it serves don’t trust it. The public won’t cooperate with crooked cops and juries won’t convict on the basis of testimony from known liars. Has the FBI learned this lesson from their Whitmer kidnapping stunt? It doesn’t appear so.

Scientists can’t influence public opinion if the prevailing public opinion is that they’re all full of crap. That’s a lesson that the climate change priests are going to learn very soon. All of their predictions have been proven false, but the suffering from their solutions has been quite real. Have they seen the news from Sri Lanka? Do they really think that starving people are just going to turn the other cheek in response to being deceived?

Medical professionals can’t steer public policy after they’ve endangered lives with deception and cover-ups. Almost everything the CDC and NIH said about preventing the spread of COVID was wrong, and the Fauci/Birx comedy act knew they were deceiving us the whole time they performed for the cameras. We’ve even discovered that scientists supposedly working for us accepted royalties from the very companies that they monitor. Do they really expect us to trust them on monkeypox? I don’t think so.

Professionals who depend on credibility to accomplish their life’s mission need to take a close look at CNN. They need to decide if that’s the future they want.

John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho

That Fascist Dem’s $739 Billion Boondoggle….

AUGUST 8, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

ENERGY PRICES SET TO SKYROCKET

The Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act $739 billion boondoggle will have nightmarish consequences for years to come, assuming it is actually implemented. Half of the bill’s total spending, $369 billion, is devoted to energy and climate. This spending, largely devoted to subsidizing wind and solar energy, is intended to hasten an alleged transition from fossil fuels to “green” energy sources. In fact, no such transition is taking place. The gap between energy produced from coal and energy produced from wind and solar is widening, not narrowing. And the world will never depend on wind turbines, which generate electricity around 40% of the time, or solar panels, which, where I live, generate electricity only around 18% of the time.

One thing the Democrats’ boondoggle will do is contribute to the rapidly rising cost of wind and solar energy. My colleague Isaac Orr explained in June, before the present bill took shape:

Prices of key minerals and metals for wind, solar, and battery storage have spiked in recent months, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
***
The prices of lithium and cobalt more than doubled in 2021, and those for copper, nickel, and aluminum all rose by around 25 percent to 40 percent.

The price trends have continued into 2022. The price of lithium has increased an astonishing two-and-a-half times since the start of the year. The prices of nickel and aluminum — for which Russia is a key supplier — have also kept rising, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The price of wind turbines rose 9% in 2021:

Solar panels were up 16%:

Also: “Prices for lithium-ion batteries are likely to see a major uptick in 2022.”

The deadly combination of mandates and subsidies will drive all of these prices vastly higher in the years to come. Who will benefit? Countries that produce and, more important, process copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium. Oh yeah: that is the Communist Chinese. The Inflation Reduction Act $739 boondoggle is the Democrats’ biggest sellout to the Communist Chinese Party yet.