Politics

The two most striking features of the FBI’s unprecedented raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home are its bold intrusiveness and the public’s mistrust of the Bureau’s honesty and integrity. The Department of Justice could have used low-profile subpoenas to force Trump to turn over any documents, including the most sensitive ones. It didn’t. Instead, it sent carloads of federal agents to search the former president’s house. That raid was also unusual in a second sense. Although mishandling federal documents is a felony, it happens with some frequency, alas, and is almost never subject to full-scale raids. The blowback has been a Category 5 storm. The damage has grown because the FBI and Department of Justice remained silent for three days, refusing to explain their actions.

Get it yet? The point of the raid on Mar-a-Lago and the January 6 hearings is all about one man. Nope, not Donald Trump: Merrick Garland. Either the FBI is trying to get Garland to indict Trump for something, and failing that to indict the highest ranking person near Trump, or Garland is already on the case himself. The reason for this is that nothing else worked. Democrats pointed the full national security apparatus at Trump, with the FBI doing yeoman-like work. They turned Robert Mueller loose with unlimited resources for a full year, going as far as to suggest Trump had obstructed an investigation that found him innocent. Alice in Wonderland stuff, that.

Since the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound on Monday, the Democratic Party’s resistance leaders have been tumescent. Former Justice Department officials are going on television to give an expert gloss to the prospect of the 45th president finally getting prosecuted. Former solicitor general Neil Katyal, for example, told MSNBC on Monday evening that if he was the former president’s lawyer, he would tell him to prepare for prison time. Marc Elias, the Democratic Party lawyer who commissioned the infamous Steele Dossier, went on Twitter to suggest the raid might mean Trump was guilty of destroying government property and thus ineligible to run in 2024. It feels like 2017 all over again. And that is what makes this latest episode of Get Trump a farce.

Like characters in a dystopian novel, the elderly bore the worst of it. Dianne Feinstein, whose friends were already whispering about how there she really was, was found walking back and forth between her private room and common area, which she was required to come to over and over again just to get through the 16-hour ordeal. Chuck Grassley, only a year younger, confessed to taking 10-minute naps and struggling to stay awake, while lamenting how he missed his family. Patrick Leahy, 84 and coming off hip surgery, was lucky. He received more comments about the Batman sticker on his wheelchair than he did questions about why he was even there in the first place. “Pat, I’m glad you’re here,” the comparatively juvenile Tim Kaine (64)  remarked. “We shouldn't have to suffer alone.

Donald Trump headlined CPAC Texas, delivering a series of broadsides to the Biden administration to a packed arena at Dallas’s Hilton Anatole. The more than 2,500 seats were filled — with even more guests lining the aisles. Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, was supposed to introduce the 45th president — but found herself bumped at the expense of Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, for reasons that remain unclear. Prior to the former president’s speech, a short film played on the large TV monitors. “We are a nation in decline,” a Trump voiceover began. “We are a failing nation.” Gloomy black-and-white footage followed, accompanied by thunder and rain sounds. A screenshot of Trump’s suspended Twitter account was perhaps the most moving image.

Dallas, Texas Howdy from the Lone Star State, where Cockburn is braving 100-degree heat, overpriced IPAs and America First applause lines to bring you coverage of CPAC Texas. The conservative conference has come to the Hilton Anatole in Dallas for the second year — and is once again headlined by former president Donald Trump, set to speak this evening. Appropriately, the hotel’s two bars are called “Media” and “Gossip,” as if they’d been purpose-built for your intrepid correspondent. Cockburn managed to finagle his way into the $375-a-head Cattleman’s Ball for free on Friday night, where he sat at a table with a cadre of fellow hacks, chief among them John Fredericks, the “Godzilla of Truth.

This week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made another shrewd political move, showing why many Republicans think he is their best shot to win back the White House. DeSantis suspended Tampa’s woke prosecutor, Andrew Warren, for failing to do his duty and enforce the law. The governor didn’t just assert his power. He laid out a clear, detailed, substantive case for why he is suspending Warren from office. DeSantis’s move was both smart politically and sound constitutionally (assuming the courts uphold his suspension). Let’s take the politics first. Poll after poll shows rising crime is one of the country’s top issues, second only to inflation. What DeSantis’s suspension of Warren did was to make crime and punishment his own issue — one he was willing to act upon.