Merrick Garland’s Remarks

Yesterday Attorney General Merrick Garland issued some remarks on what is variously being called a “search”, “raid”, or “siege”. If anyone thought such a statement would calm the situation, they must be disappointed. From AG Garland’s statement:

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.

That search was of premises located in Florida belonging to the former President. 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.

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.

The Department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former President’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter.

Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy

President Trump responded by insisting that the warrant be made public. Whether that would quell the rumors about the search is anybody’s guess. There has been speculation, reported by CNN, that they were looking for documents related to nuclear weapons.

David Brooks has devoted his New York Times column today to a lament that the FBI may have delivered the 2024 presidential election to Trump:

Why is Donald Trump so powerful? How did he come to dominate one of the two major parties and get himself elected president? Is it his hair? His waistline? No, it’s his narratives. Trump tells powerful stories that ring true to tens of millions of Americans.

The main one is that America is being ruined by corrupt coastal elites. According to this narrative, there is an interlocking network of highly educated Americans who make up what the Trumpians have come to call the Regime: Washington power players, liberal media, big foundations, elite universities, woke corporations. These people are corrupt, condescending and immoral and are looking out only for themselves. They are out to get Trump because Trump is the person who stands up to them. They are not only out to get Trump; they are out to get you.

This narrative has a core of truth to it. Highly educated metropolitan elites have become something of a self-enclosed Brahmin class. But the Trumpian propaganda turns what is an unfortunate social chasm into venomous conspiracy theory. It simply assumes, against a lot of evidence, that the leading institutions of society are inherently corrupt, malevolent and partisan and are acting in bad faith.

It simply assumes that the proof of people’s virtue is that they’re getting attacked by the Regime. Trump’s political career has been kept afloat by elite scorn. The more elites scorn him, the more Republicans love him. The key criterion for leadership in the Republican Party today is having the right enemies.

Into this situation walks the F.B.I. There’s a lot we don’t know about the search at Mar-a-Lago. But we do know how the Republican Party reacted. The right side of my Twitter feed was ecstatic. See! We really are persecuted! Essays began to appear with titles like “The Regime Wants Its Revenge.” Ron DeSantis tweeted, “The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.” As usual, the tone was apocalyptic. “This is the worst attack on this Republic in modern history,” the Fox News host Mark Levin exclaimed.

The investigation into Trump was seen purely as a heinous Regime plot.

George Will, no supporter of Donald Trump, too, has devoted his Washington Post column to the search:

In one way, this week’s behavior by the FBI and the Justice Department was not unusual, unfortunately. Hardly a day passes without some government entity vindicating historian Robert Conquest’s axiom: “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”

Remember the Pop-Tart pistol boy? The 7-year-old chewed his pastry into the shape of a gun and said “Bang! Bang!,” so his school suspended him and urged all parents to discuss the “incident.” Remember the 5-year-old girl who was labeled a “terroristic threat” and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation because she talked about shooting people with her Hello Kitty gun that shot bubbles? How did we reach this point where so many adults flinch from acting the part by practicing prudence?

This nation is running low on an indispensable ingredient of a successful society: trust, in institutions and one another. This week was another subtraction. Garland has said about the Justice Department, “We will and we must speak through our work.” Actually, his political duty is to explain and justify his work more thoroughly than he did in his minimalist statement Thursday afternoon.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal muse:

The warrant may shed some light on the reasons for the search, but it will be only one side of the story. Mr. Garland was at pains Thursday to say his department is doing all this by the legal book, and that no one is playing politics. But the AG is clearly trying to deflect anger at Monday’s unprecedented search of a former President’s home without having to elaborate on the legal case he is pursuing.

It’s nice to hear Mr. Garland say he personally signed off on the search. But it’s a little much to hear him lecture the country that it’s beyond the pale to criticize the FBI. After the Russia collusion fraud, the Steele dossier con, the misleading FISA requests for the Carter Page warrants, and the Robert Mueller whitewash of all of that, there are plenty of reasons for Americans to take a don’t-trust-but-verify attitude to the bureau. This isn’t disdain for the rule of law. It’s well-earned skepticism.

By sanctioning the Mar-a-Lago search, Mr. Garland has broken a political norm that has stood for 232 years. He had better have enough evidence to justify it in the end, or he will have unleashed political forces and a legal precedent that Democrats as much as Donald Trump may come to regret.

I think there are plenty of misconceptions here to go around. The FBI has never been above politics. Not in the 114 years of its existence. I doubt that the risk of its having transmogrified into our equivalent of the Stazi is an unlikely but not impossible risk which could be mitigated with civil service reform. IMO it is above all a bureaucratic organization.

I also think that if, as some have claimed, the objective of the search was to disqualify President Trump from seek elective office in the future, those who long for such an outcome will be disappointed. Not only would they need to prove intent, it would need to be on a crime that was within the Constitutional bars to seeking office. Congress lacks the authority to add to those by statute.

One last point. The search has not materially changed the betting odds for the 2024 presidential election. Trump is favored to win with Ron DeSeantis second, and Joe Biden third.