Three months and less before the important congressional elections, the explosiveness of American politics and the volatility of the situation The wind in the US got a particularly dramatic expression in the last seven days.
● Republican politicians are no longer enthusiastic about the possibility of Trump running in 2024
It started last Monday, with a sudden raid by FBI agents on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s residence in Palm Beach County, in South Florida. This continued for 72 hours of bitter attacks from all parts of the American right on the Secretary of Justice, on the FBI Director and on the very system of law enforcement.
This stopped suddenly on Friday morning, when details began to leak about the reasons for the raid and its results. That was turned on its head Friday afternoon, after a Florida court lifted the blackout. The search warrant, which was the basis of the raid, was made public; And also to the “receipt” that FBI agents gave to Trump’s lawyers, when they confiscated boxes full of secret documents.
We do not know what is included in these documents. The Washington Post reported on Friday morning that some of them relate to nuclear weapons, but no confirmation from any other source has been found at this time. The only two documents listed in the FBI’s “receipt” concern the French president and one of Trump’s confidantes, who was pardoned after being convicted of obstruction of justice. These two documents do not seem sensational.
The receipt received by Trump’s attorney with the items taken / Photo: Associated Press, Jon Elswick
But a considerable number of other documents taken are sealed with various classifications of secrecy, of which “top secret”. This category restricts their perusal to a highly secure room and only to a few pairs of eyes. The President of the United States, in the last days of his term, decided to carry the documents to his private golf club in Florida, where he made his residence. He threw them in a room without a lock, first denied their presence, delayed their return – and finally possibly lied to the Department of Justice. Did you?”, the biblical writer would ask. What was so tempting about this fruit of the mind?
The New York Times had an amusing answer from anonymous associates of the former president: Trump has always been addicted to souvenirs. He has no bookshelves, because he doesn’t read books. But it has “nick-knack” shelves. How do you translate nik-nak into Hebrew? I can only think of the Yiddish word “chachakes”.
The New York Times gave as an example the pair of running and jumping shoes of Shaquille O’Neal, the famous former basketball player of the NBA. “Giant shoes,” the newspaper writes, that Trump displays in his office, in the Trump Towers in Manhattan, alongside a huge collection of cha’chaks, which his guests have to take special precautions to avoid bumping into.
So he took some Chachkes from the Oval Office of his White House. And since he was the president of the republic and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces, in any case among the chachakes there were hidden state secrets, and very hidden state secrets, and especially hidden ones.
“She just had to ask”
By the way, presidential papers do not have to be secret or classified to belong to the government. American law requires everything that crosses the president’s desk to be sent to the National Archives.
The employees of the National Archives immediately noticed the lack of documents. They demanded their return. Trump handled the whole thing in opposite ways. For months, his lawyers traded blows with the government’s lawyers. Boxes of documents were returned to Washington. Trump himself claimed last week that all the government had to do was ask, and he would repay. And indeed, representatives of the government returned and visited the president’s residence, and left with documents.
But this matter is now seriously doubted. According to a report in the New York Times, in June, Trump’s lawyer informed the National Archives and the Ministry of Justice in writing that all the classified material had been returned to the state. This was following a visit by the most senior intelligence officer in the Department of Justice to Mar-a-Lago.
If there was indeed such a statement, and it was signed by Trump’s proxy, there may be reason to suspect the former president of obstructing proceedings and misleading a government employee. These are criminal offenses punishable separately.
This is important, because the strongest argument against the raid was that it was unnecessary; that the prosecution went too far; that the whole matter could have been settled in negotiations behind the scenes. But if indeed the former president concealed the existence of the documents, and used his lawyers to mislead the Ministry of Justice, the government had no choice but to use enforcement measures.
Parking offenses of the vice president’s husband
Here is a new potential. Until Friday, Trump was believed to be the victim of political persecution by a Democratic administration, which is allegedly trying to disrupt his plans to return and run for the presidency. Although it is quite clear that this claim will continue to be heard, the legal basis of the government’s actions has been strengthened, and the opposition’s claims have been weakened.
It was noticeable that the wind was taken out of the sails of Trump supporters over the weekend. For example, the headline on the popular Trumpist right-wing website breitbart.com on Saturday night dealt with parking violations attributed to the vice president’s husband’s drivers. Indeed, the deputy’s husband’s drivers.
FBI search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in Florida / Photo: Associated Press, Jon Elswick
Trump assumed from the beginning that the raid would benefit his position, because it would make it easier for him to go back and attribute his growing political and legal problems to the “witch hunt” that the government bureaucracy (“the Deep State”) is conducting against him. He even accused FBI agents of planting documents to incriminate him. This is a very serious charge. Millions will believe her, as millions believe that Joe Biden stole the election from Trump in 2020. But Trump may have difficulty convincing millions of others, without whom there is no revival of his political ambitions. While there are many passionate Trumpists in America, their numbers are not enough to restore him to power. He needs the massive support of independent and moderate voters.
12 jurors will not be enough this time
Early last week, Democrats were tearing their hair out over their administration’s poor political handling of the raid on the president’s home. The prolonged silence of the Ministry of Justice abandoned the arena to Trump supporters.
Republicans, who avoided unequivocally siding with the former president in a series of other matters, and hoped that he would not be their party’s candidate in the next election, saw themselves forced to feel his defense, after it became clear that he was being persecuted for no wrongdoing. Some have even compared the FBI to the Gestapo, calling for a far-reaching purge of the justice system and the intelligence community when the Republicans return to power. At the end of the week, the formations were reversed, and it was the Republicans who found themselves on the defensive.
The Wall Street Journal, whose editorials (though not the news pages) are the right’s most important mouthpiece, went from blunt attacks to philosophizing during the week. The editors of the newspaper argued against the actions of the Secretary of Justice Merrick Garland, that it is not enough for him to convince a jury of 12 of the truth of his claims; He will have to convince “the majority of the American public”.
This is an interesting claim, which of course has merit, but it calls into question the supremacy of the rule of law. Israelis will be able to shake their heads. The claims and counter-claims in this case sound like they were taken from the prosecutor’s files in the Binyamin Netanyahu trial. At stake in the US and Israel is the rule of law; the critics of the proceedings against Trump doubt the principle that Roman law called (and the same applies to English law) “justice will be done even if the sky falls”, and Hebrew law calls “judgment the mountain”. It is difficult to think of important questions More in a democratic system, much more is at stake than the fate of one politician who wants to return to power.
_________________
Previous listings at yoavkarny.com וב-https://tinyurl.com/yoavkarny-globes
Tweets (in English) intwitter.com/YoavKarny