I have to say, I’m kind of enjoying this whole Trump-FBI raid news cycle. It’s so patently absurd, but like a badly written TV show, you just feel like you’ve got to see through until the end.
On Thursday, AG Merrick Garland finally spoke out while not really saying anything at all. He did agree to unseal the warrant used for the raid of Trump’s home, but he gave no details about what the FBI was after and what evidence they supposedly had to undergird their actions. It felt like an attempt to downplay the ordeal. Had the FBI failed to find what it was looking for?
Then the leaks started. Just hours after Garland had sneered at Americans for questioning the FBI’s integrity, someone inside the department (or the DOJ) ran to The Washington Post to claim the government searched Trump’s home because they were looking for “nuclear documents.”
Merrick Garland this afternoon: “Federal law, longstanding Department rules, and our ethical obligations prevent me from providing further details as to the basis of the search at this time”
Couple hours later: the most explosive imaginable details leaked to the Washington Post
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 12, 2022
So let me get this straight. Donald Trump possessed nuclear documents that were so important they warranted an FBI raid, but the government waited 18 months to execute the raid and then made zero arrests? You know, because the government is famous for not arresting people for stealing nuclear secrets. Sounds totally legit, right?
Of course, the media lapped it up, and the resistance libs went wild. What’s the latest theory? That Trump is being targeted under the Espionage Act. No, I’m not kidding.
More indicators this is about crimes like #Espionage Act:
NYT:
“Two people briefed on the classified documents that investigators believe remained at [MAL] indicated that they were so sensitive in nature, and related to national security, that the Justice Department had to act.”— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) August 11, 2022
Espionage carries the penalty of life in prison or the death penalty.
— Brett Meiselas (@BMeiselas) August 12, 2022
This is how the sausage is made in the anti-Trump world. The FBI carries out a partisan witchhunt against the current president’s top political opponent while providing no justification. Then that same FBI runs off and leaks something completely unfalsifiable and ludicrous to a left-wing publication in an attempt to cover their own tails. That story is then amplified by the entire mainstream media, accepted as fact even though it makes no sense. Finally, the mainline left starts to come up with radical theories about Trump being a secret agent for Saudi Arabia. Everything is thrown into the blender and becomes conventional wisdom despite there not being an ounce of evidence to support any of it.
It’s all just so laughable. Further, the big tell that the FBI didn’t even find anything is that the leaks don’t say they found anything. They may have been ostensibly searching for nuclear documents, but if they had found any, that would have been leaked immediately.
In the end, Trump is going to come out of this looking better than he has in a long time. The resistance continues to cling to their hopes of an FBI frog march, but it still feels like they overplayed their hand. Trump is not getting charged under the Espionage Act. He’s not even going to be charged with anything, in my opinion. At least not related to this (the January 6th fishing expedition is another story).