In mid-July, a reporter asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland whether the Justice Department’s investigation into attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election could eventually turn its gaze toward Donald Trump.
“No person is above the law,” Garland answered. “I’ll say that again. No person is above the law in this country. I can’t say it any more clearly than that.”
Garland’s reply centered on the 2020 election and the events surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. But it also applies to the FBI’s search Monday at the former president’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate. Agents executed a search warrant at Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, residence as part of an investigation into whether he took classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he left office.
Predictably, Trump reacted with hyperbolic indignation.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” the piqued Trump wrote in a statement he released Monday. “Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
Republican Party leaders were also incensed. GOP National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel branded the search as “outrageous.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused the Justice Department of displaying “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” and warned that Garland would become the one investigated if Republicans gain control of the House in November.
GOP outrage hardly comes as a surprise. It does, however, have utility as a rallying cry ahead of pivotal midterm elections in November, and the looming 2024 presidential election. Republicans want voters to see the Mar-a-Lago search as nothing more than a cheap political ploy, a below-the-belt gambit to derail Trump’s 2024 aspirations before he can build momentum. Turn the search into an asset, the strategy seems to be, and make Trump the victim.
Instead, Americans should see the FBI search for what it is: plain, simple enforcement of the law, applied to all Americans without artifice or prejudice.
To carry out the search, Justice Department lawyers had to get a federal judge to agree that they had probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed. Several laws on the books make it a crime to willfully conceal, remove or destroy government documents, particularly classified records, or keep them in an unauthorized place.
Earlier this year, the National Archives and Records Administration, which oversees the handling of presidential records from previous administrations, received more than a dozen boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago, and some contained classified information, The New York Times reported. Trump should have relinquished all of those records when he left the White House. According to NARA officials, some of the records it received from Mar-a-Lago had been torn up.
What political impact the search of Trump’s estate may have on upcoming elections is anyone’s guess, and it may be that it galvanizes support for GOP candidates. That really doesn’t matter. What matters is the application of accountability regardless of how much political or financial clout someone carries.. Though it appears as if there’s no precedent for the FBI carrying out a surprise search at a former president’s home, there’s no indication that the search at Mar-a-Lago was unwarranted or lacked legal basis.
Accountability becomes even more important with the ongoing investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Federal prosecutors are looking not just at the actions of the mob that attacked the Capitol, but at Trump himself, The Washington Post reported last month. Prosecutors are looking into discussions between aides to Vice President Mike Pence and Trump and his inner circle about attempts to swap Trump-allied electors for certified electors in key states that Joe Biden won, the Post reported.
Trump World calls these attempts to probe the actions of the former president a “witch hunt,” the same label a group of Trump supporters outside Mar-a-Lago on Monday used to describe the FBI search at the former president’s estate. To Trump and his faithful, any effort to hold the former president up to legal scrutiny is a “witch hunt.”
There’s a better, more accurate label for it, though.
Accountability.
