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Anyone speaking in definitive terms about the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is probably getting ahead of themselves. Without more information from the FBI or the Department of Justice, there is much we don’t know about this investigation and where it is or isn’t heading.
We do know some things, however, even as the DOJ declines to comment on the search. We know that a group of FBI agents executed a search warrant at Trump’s Florida property on Monday. We know he wasn’t there at the time. We know that multiple sources have told multiple news organizations that the search was related to Trump’s handling of presidential records. Though again, that has not been confirmed by investigators.
And we know that the DOJ has been investigating the possible mishandling of classified information, and that the National Archives and Records Administration has said it retrieved 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago, which included classified information, earlier this year. We know that mishandling this type of information can potentially be a crime under federal law.
We also know that this search is not something the executive branch, through the DOJ and FBI, could have undertaken unilaterally. In order to secure the search warrant, investigators would have needed to convince a federal judge that there was probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed.
That is not to say conclusively that a crime had been committed, or that there is any forthcoming prosecution, or to prejudge what the investigators found or didn’t find at Mar-a-Lago. On those fronts, we don’t yet know much of anything.
Given what we do know, however, we think it is quite a whopper for Trump as his allies to try to cast this search as something that “could only take place in broken, third-world countries,” as he put it in a Monday statement. It’s almost as if punishing political opponents wasn’t a foundational part of Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2016 (“Lock her up!”), or as if Trump didn’t help smash our country’s tradition of peaceful transfers of power and make us look like a third world country in the process.
To be clear, two wrongs (or many wrongs) don’t make a right. As a country, we can’t continue to “whatabout” our way through every event or debate; we need to focus on the substance of the matter at hand. Trump’s past statements about criminal charges against his opponents would not justify the same happening to him, obviously. But potentially criminal activity involving the custody of public records does warrant criminal investigation. That is generally how justice works – the same rules should apply to everyone, no matter their status.
Of the many things we don’t know for sure here, another is the extent that the Biden White House has or hasn’t been involved in this investigation. White House officials have said they were not notified of the Mar-a-Lago search ahead of time. Hopefully that is accurate, as no president or their administration should ever use the Department of Justice to target political opponents. Congressional and press scrutiny of this claim of non-involvement from the Biden White House is absolutely necessary as this process continues. But it is very different to recognize this and proceed with skepticism than it is to jump to the unsupported conclusion that we now live in a Banana Republic.
Take Trump’s ridiculous and factually challenged comparison of the Mar-a-Lago search to the Watergate break-in, for example. Nobody got judicial approval for a search warrant before breaking into the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate building. These events are hardly in the same universe.
The process is still unfolding, but what we’ve seen so far is not some form of third world persecution — it’s how potential prosecution works in the American justice system. It’s too soon to know where this particular investigation will lead, but it’s not too soon to dismiss some of the deflection and accusations from Trump and his allies.
