My guess is that right now whoever came up with the idea of sending 30 armed FBI agents to conduct an unannounced raid on a former president’s home would probably welcome a do-over.
That FBI raid in August 2022 was the opening salvo, the signal for all to see that anything goes in the political war between Democrats and their nemesis, Donald Trump. Until then, in the entire history of our country, no sitting or former U.S. president had ever been indicted for a federal crime. In the tsunami that followed, Trump has been indicted four times, charged with 91 federal felonies.
Regardless of Trump’s stubborn resistance, there was no urgent need for aggressive action by the FBI to retrieve the classified documents in Trump’s possession. National security was not at risk. The raid was a very visible and chilling display of the kind usually reserved for banana republics — a forceful intrusion by the forces of a sitting administration into the private residence of their primary political opponent. Intended or not, the optics are unmistakable.
Say what you will about Trump — whether you admire or despise him, he served our nation for four years as our duly elected president, successfully navigating through some very challenging times. Surely a lighter touch — perhaps even a smidgen of respect — should have been in order.
But here we are, two years later, with special counsel Robert Hur having completed his in-depth investigation and finding that Biden’s mishandling of classified material was in most respects more egregious than Trump’s — which left him in the awkward position of searching for a rationale to avoid subjecting President Joe Biden to the heavy-handed treatment already meted out to his predecessor.
Mr. Hur’s sensible solution was to point out what we’ve all been watching — the physical and mental decline of Mr. Biden — which, in his view, renders Biden unfit for trial. One might think that Biden supporters would appreciate the special counsel’s efforts to let him off the hook — except for the fact that his basis for not charging Biden begs the next obvious question: if Joe Biden doesn’t have the mental capacity to handle a court proceeding, how can he possibly handle another four years as POTUS?
The answer to that question, of course, is that he cannot — an inconvenient truth that should be no surprise to anyone, but that until now we’ve refused to confront.
While the Democrats deal with that unhappy turn of events, Mr. Trump still faces daunting legal challenges — but other elements of the Democrats’ strategy to cripple his candidacy seem to be unraveling at the seams:
— Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is suddenly looking not quite as noble a crusader for justice. His no-bail policy allowed the illegals arrested for beating up two NYPD cops to walk away from jail and then skip town. The Bragg-engineered indictment of Trump charges him with improperly documenting payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to buy her silence during that election — a book-keeping matter (albeit spun by Bragg into 34 felony counts), that hardly needs to be litigated during the 2024 election.
— The grand jury empaneled by Fulton County DA Fani Willis indicted Trump for attempts to overturn the 2020 Georgia election results. The indictment effectively morphs Trump’s political meddling into a criminal racketeering episode under the RICO statute designed to give government the tools to go after mobsters; that’s a major stretch on its own, and the case has been compounded by Willis’s extraordinarily bad judgment in hiring her lover as chief prosecutor and then enjoying lavish taxpayer-funded vacation travel with him.
— In New York State, Attorney General Letitia James is following through on her is campaign promise to “get Trump”, seeking a $370 million penalty plus termination of the Trump firm’s license to do business in New York, because of fraudulently overstating the value of their assets in securing bank loans (imagine that — a Realtor who exaggerates). Curiously, it seems to be a crime with no victim; Trump’s bankers have been happy to loan him money and have been repaid principal and interest exactly as promised.
— Efforts in Colorado to keep Trump off the ballot based on his role in the supposed Jan. 6 insurrection — a popular claim, but one unsupported by any court determination anywhere that what happened on Jan. 6 was an insurrection — is evidently running into a wall at the U.S. Supreme Court, which seems loathe to allow individual states to decide who can vie in a national election.
Judges, juries and special counsels should not be selecting our next president; that’s the electorate’s job. Election interference, in any form, is always wrong. And the poetic justice in this case is that the barrage of election year legal challenges intended to undermine Donald Trump’s candidacy have had exactly the opposite effect — they’ve supercharged it.
And what now? The Robert Hur findings, while unwelcome by Democrats, may prove in the long term be a godsend. If Democrats choose to change presidential candidates to one more palatable to moderates and independents — and their voters still have the opportunity to throw rocks at Donald Trump — they may carry the day in November. Should they choose to make that change, the ball will be in GOP’s court to decide whether to follow suit.
Donald Trump may have been the only candidate Biden could beat, but the inverse is probably true as well. How refreshing it would be — helpful to both parties and the American electorate — to have a clean slate. It’s not too late.
