People who dislike President Trump have been asking all week why Trump didn’t himself release the search warrant his lawyers were given this week, as if Trump’s failure to release it was some proof of guilt.
These are people who are so blinded by TDS that they can’t think - although many of them imho can’t think in the first place.
“But I digress…” as Al Fotheringham would have said.
First of all, had Trump released the warrant and it wasn’t sufficiently damning to him in the eyes of the left - and it’s not likely to be due to the nature of such instruments - he’d have been accused by some of the loonier left of having “doctored” it. So that’s one very good reason right there. If there’s any way to make Trump look bad, the media will find it, so why should he give them the chance to mock him?
Secondly, by releasing it, he’d have taken the pressure off of the DoJ and AG Garland - which would have been hugely counterproductive to his interests. At this point, saying very little and letting Garland and the DOJ look bad is Trump’s best strategy. You’ll notice, he’s not said a lot about Monday’s events outside of bemoaning the fact that his home was searched unjustly.
Until Thursday. Then he as much as demanded that the DOJ release the warrant, after Garland indicated publicly that’s what he will do. Give the man his due, Trump knows how to play a room.
Thirdly, with Trump saying nothing and providing no documents, the heavy pressure goes straight to the DoJ and Garland. That means Garland and Trump’s White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre have to answer the difficult questions, what few the mealy mouthed press bother to ask. God Bless Peter Doocy of Fox for putting that woman on the hot spot on a regular basis and showing her up for the obfuscating fool she is. Again, I digress…
Forcing Garland to release the documents - if indeed that happens - forces the AG to own both what was done and the consequences of it. And this is exactly what came to pass on Thursday - Garland admitted he approved the warrant. He owns this mess now, unless someone can show that the White House was involved - and that may well happen yet, it’s early days in this scandal.
Oh, and that sound you hear? That’s FBI’s Christopher Wrey, praying fervently that Garland stays front and center in this story. That, or cursing himself for letting himself be pulled into this fiasco.
Frankly, as many others have stated, if there is no smoking gun here (if there are no two year old classified nuclear documents might be the better choice of words, ya think?), Garland is gone. There is no way he can (or should) survive what he has done this week, having violated Trump’s Fourth Amendment rights to gain a political advantage for his party.
I don’t care who says this wasn’t political, it most certainly was. Nobody raided Obama, Bush, Clinton nor any other president’s home after they left 1600 with papers or other memorabilia. And they all do.
Obama purportedly still has some 30 million pages of presidential documents in his possession. No one has denied that claim. The Clintons, for God’s sake, took $28,000 dollars worth of White House furniture - sofas, a couch and chairs, rugs - when they moved out. Bush’s DoJ didn’t raid their home to get it back.
Biden won’t dare keep Garland around if this gets any worse - although, given Biden’s horrific judgement, there’s every chance he will.
Regardless of any of this, the warrant is only going to tell us the “what” of this farce. What we really need is the affidavit, which will give us the “why”, the reasoning behind seeking this warrant. Constitutional lawyer Jonathon Turley and others have made this point repeatedly and there’s no denying the importance of it. The affidavit is the meat in this bun, and I think the meat is rancid.
If, as I and many others suspect, the reasoning within the affidavit is spurious, there is every likelihood that the fool has handed the 2024 election to Trump. So don’t expect to see the affidavit, at least not without a major fight from the DoJ and their media mouthpieces. Worse though for the administration, if the affidavit isn’t produced, Trump and the GOP get to make whatever claims they wish about it, and there’s not a damned thing the left can do about it but whine. “Put up or shut up” will be the challenge they’re faced with if they don’t open up the affidavit.
Although the 2024 election is more than two years away, what Garland and whoever else was behind Monday’s events have done will resonate with Trump’s base. It will also weigh heavily with independents who are horrified at this abuse of prosecutorial indiscretion, and moderate democrats who will not support an administration that would act this way.
Lastly, and this ties in with my earlier comments this week - this could well have been a ruse to bring Trump seriously into play in the 2024 election. Democrats think they can beat Trump like a drum in 2024, that having him declare before this November will help them avoid the coming rout they face, and they are terrified of any other Republican prospect in 2024 - and with good reason. There’s a lot of Republican talent out there just waiting to show their chops to the electorate.
The only problem with this gambit, if such it is, is that the democrats have badly misjudged not only the Republican base but the entire American electorate. Americans are truly not happy with what they’ve seen go on this week. If political blunders are scored from one to ten, Garland and the FBI have scored 237 with this move, possibly an all time high score in fact.
Republicans have, for the moment, united solidly behind Trump. People who were reconsidering their allegiance to Trump are now solidly behind him again. I don’t believe the architects of this event considered that to be even a remote possibility and it’s going to hurt the left badly.
Even Governor DeSantis has bent the knee in deference to these events. DeSantis is the most likely 2024 Republican candidate if Trump does not run, and certainly the one who will most benefit from anything that hurts Trump.
Could this be why he chose to speak out in Trump’s support? If this warrant leads to anything troublesome for Trump (which I don’t expect), DeSantis will be seen as supportive when that was the right thing to do. That will only help him with Trump’s supporters.
Trump has played this week’s events masterfully, and if the DoJ’s and FBI’s case is as bad as we’re being led to expect, it has guaranteed him the Republican nomination and, very likely, the White House in 2024.
Zowie, Dr. Foth!
(Alan Fotheringham was a very talented and much loved Canadian journalist who I grew up reading. He regularly used the phrase “but I digress”, and “Zowie Dr. Foth” in his columns, and it was only fair to give him credit when I used those phrases.