FBI raid

Former president Donald Trump decried what he characterized as the “fake and fabricated charges” brought against him by the Department of Justice in a half-hour speech on the evening of his arraignment Addressing a crowd of around 900 loyalists at his Bedminster resort in New Jersey, Trump referred to Jack Smith’s indictment of him as “election interference” and “political persecution.” “This day will go down in infamy,” he told his adoring fans, claiming that Biden wanted to see him spend “400 years in prison” for “possessing my own presidential papers.

Donald Trump is the first president in history to be indicted for federal crimes, in this case thirty-seven counts that center on his taking of highly classified materials from the White House to Mar-a-Lago in January 2021. The charges also implicate the former president and a close aide, Waltine Nauta, in a conspiracy to hide the documents in whole or in part from the National Archives, the Department of Justice and his own legal team — and making false statements along those same lines.  Hundreds of documents are of concern, classified at the highest levels with origins at the CIA, NSA and elsewhere in the intelligence community. While leaks and speculation prior to the unsealing of the indictment suggested this was a routine Espionage Act case — i.e.

Donald Trump has been indicted by the Department of Justice following an investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith into classified documents he took while exiting the White House, according to a Truth Social post from the former president. This would be the first time a former president has ever faced federal charges. Trump has been charged with seven counts in the indictment, according to multiple reports. "The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional boxes in Chinatown, D.C.

At first read, the newly released Mar-a-Lago search warrant reveals little, with about half its pages redacted. It does suggest two possible narratives going forward, one of which has severe political implications: the National Archives sicced the FBI on Candidate Trump. The warrant says the search was based on “a significant number of civilian witnesses” to Trump’s actions and the Twitterverse is already speculating as to who that might be (Ivanka or the butler?). This will generate a thousand conspiracy theories as to who first told the FBI about the classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. But in the end, it adds little to key questions.

I write a day after the FBI, without warning, raided Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s home in Palm Beach. According to Trump, agents even broke into his safe and made off with who-knows-what documents. They also rifled through Melania Trump’s wardrobe. Maybe they were looking for classified lingerie. Who knows? As many commentators pointed out immediately, this assault on a former president of the United States by what amounts to the Democratic Party’s secret police was unprecedented. Never before in our history has a former president been subject to the mafia-busting, terrorist-crushing might of state police power directed by the opposing party. That’s just in our history, though. Elsewhere the story is not so cheery.