Thursday, August 11, 2022

DOJ Targets Trump: Without Fear or Favor

 By Mildred Robertson

The rule of law. That is the foundation of the American experiment. And today U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland reinforced that concept when he acknowledged that the Department of Justice had executed a search warrant on the property of the President of the United States at his Mar-A-Lago home in Florida.

Garland’s announcement should quiet the pundits and politicians who lamented the speed with which the DOJ has addressed this ex-president’s numerous misdeeds. It appears that the wheels of justice were quietly grinding behind the scene as the DOJ planned the search and seizure of classified documents Trump allegedly spirited off to Mar-A-Lago when he departed the White House.  This action comes after months of negotiations with Trump’s legal staff to retrieve the documents.

The DOJ questioned Trump staffers who were involved with the removal of documents to Mar-a-Lago or who were familiar with how documents were stored at his West Palm Beach residence in the spring of 2022. On June 8, 2022, DOJ and FBI officials arrived at the estate with a grand jury subpoena, where they found White House documents marked “top secret,” according to CNN. The Wall Street Journal reported that later that month the Trump Organization received and complied with a subpoena for surveillance footage from Mar-a-Logo. On August 5, 2022, a sealed search warrant for the former president’s home was issued by US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, and on August 8, 2022, plain-clothed FBI agents descended upon the residence where they executed a nine-hour search of the property that resulted in the confiscation of 15 boxes of White House documents.

Politicians and Trump supporters immediately raised an outcry, demanding that the DOJ comment on their search and seizure of boxes stored at Mar-a-Lago after Donald Trump announced the search and referred to it as a witch hunt. His protestations stirred his followers into a frenzy that included death threats toward various entities involved in the execution of the search. In fact, an armed suspect attempted to breach the FBI building in Cincinnati and was later killed in a stand-off with police. It is believed the individual was present at the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol.

In response to the outcry from Trump supporters, today the DOJ filed a motion to unseal the Trump Mar-a-Lago warrant and property receipt. Garland noted that he personally approved the decision to seek the search warrant and that, while the department did not comment on the search the day it occurred, Trump, himself confirmed the execution of the warrant. His decision to disclose details of the warrant was based upon the ex-president’s confirmation, and public interest in the search. Trump and his team have until Friday at 3 p.m. eastern time to oppose the release of the warrant and property receipt.

Trump is not new to judicial peril. The twice impeached ex-president is subject to a litany of state and federal offenses that would have landed the majority of American citizens in court, if not in jail. The outcry from his supporters is that the DOJ and other law enforcement are on a witch-hunt to destroy Trump, though evidence of his numerous misdeeds has been captured on newsreels and tweets as they occurred in real-time.

Trump’s penchant to break norms, a trait that endeared him to his followers, stretched the limits of presidential power to the breaking point. This erstwhile ex-president regularly skirted the edge of legality, and many times burst right through to fly in the face of the Constitution itself. He declared that he could “shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue” and get away with it. He then went on to govern as if that were a fact. And for the most part, he was given wide berth to do so. 

The citizens of this nation have agreed upon societal rules that govern how we interact with one another and determine the penalty for those who break them.  Our aspiration is that we all will be judged against that standard without regard to our status or wealth, color, or creed.  In the words of Merrick Garland, the DOJ is pursuing justice in this case “without fear or favor.” While we many times fall far short of this aspiration, it appears that Garland and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are striving to meet that goal as they pursue possible wrong-doing by the former U.S. President, Donald J. Trump.

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