Few people find themselves on the receiving end of an FBI search warrant.
The fact that Donald Trump now ranks among the former gives the strongest indication yet that he will face the latter.
One of the most significant and sensitive actions the US Justice Department and FBI have ever taken was the search of the former president's Mar-a-Lago property. The DOJ has never investigated a president. It is likely that the FBI and prosecutors had specific knowledge of the crime and the evidence to support it.
Specific crimes being investigated have not been listed in the search warrant. The search focused on a number of boxes of classified documents that Trump took from the White House to his Florida mansion after he left the presidency, according to Monday night news reports.
The fact that the FBI launched such a high-profile search already tells us a lot about the state of the Justice Department's case.
The five bigTakeaways are listed here.
The cause was clear.
There are federal search warrants for fishing expeditions. The search of a former president's primary residence would have been approved by both the FBI and the Justice Department. It is difficult to imagine how high the bar of probable cause would have been for the Bureau to conduct such a search. The scandals the FBI has weathered from past Trump investigations probably made the bar for probable cause even higher.
One of the biggest scandals the FBI and Justice Department have gone through in recent years was the sloppy (and ultimately illegal) paperwork surrounding a FISA warrant filed in the case of Carter Page. Two of the four warrants used in that case were later declared invalid and an FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to a crime. The Bureau's handling of the FISA warrants was eviscerated in a 500-page report by the inspector general. Key questions about the underlying evidence from the Page warrant application were not asked by the FBI.
The scandal led to internal FBI and Justice Department reforms that would have made the Mar-a-Lago search warrant subject to even closer scrutiny, and ensured that the bar for probable cause would have been so high.
The judge signed off on the search.
The US Constitution has a system of checks and balances. The DOJ and the FBI get the sign-off of the judicial branch in order for this to happen. In the case of the Trump property search, an independent federal judge needed to agree that a crime was likely committed and that there was specific evidence at Mar-a-Lago to support it.
This is the second time this year that a judge has agreed that Trump was close to a crime. The January 6 congressional committee pointed out that a federal judge agreed with its assessment that Trump committed a crime when he tried to overturn the elections.
This isn't just about Trump taking classified papers.
Establishing motive is one of the most important questions in an investigation. Who are the people who benefit? It's a crime for Trump to take home a classified document. It isn't enough for the FBI to raid the home of a former president.
The president of the US has the power to declassify any piece of information. During his time in office, Trump used this power by posting a highly classified satellite photo of an Iranian facility. The reality is that a lot of classified documents aren't that sensitive.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
