8/8: Waiting for Mar-a-La-Godot
Burning questions about the FBI "raid" on Trump's Palm Beach golf club and residence.
August 8 began with the dissemination of photos of scraps of paper—torn-up lists, in what appeared to be Trump’s handwriting, one of which spelled out STEFANIK—circling the drain of a toilet. The pictures were circulated by Maggie Haberman, the former White House correspondent for the New York Times, a notorious opportunist not exactly renowned for being hard on the Former Guy. This was evidence of him destroying documents. We also found out that, as president, Trump complained that his generals were not as loyal as Hitler’s top brass had been in the Third Reich. But all of that insanity was just an appetizer, a plate of fried calamari to the sizzling porterhouse-and-garlic-mashed entrée that was the FBI searching Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
And we found out about this from Trump himself. “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies,” Trump wrote in his statement, ostensibly capitalizing the noun to channel Hitler, “this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.” Then came six of the most wonderful words I’ve ever seen in print: “They even broke into my safe!”
His MAGA cult followers, who have spent the last six years shouting LOCK HER UP at more rallies than even that indefatigable Canadian reporter could count, went absolutely ape-shit. Their message: “This is war!” His GOP allies in Congress—you know, the ones who will need pardons should Trump somehow pull a Grover Cleveland and serve a second, non-consecutive term—tweeted out their support:
Never have the traitors been as easy to spot!
Those of us on the side of democracy, justice, and rule of law, meanwhile, were positively giddy—really for the first time since Mueller indicted Manafort and Flynn back in 2017. If this is what it appears to be, the floodgates are about to open, and the raging waters of justice are going to cleanse the Beltway, draining the swamp of all the Trump traitors.
If this is what it appears to be. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If I’ve learned nothing else these past six years, it’s not to get my hopes up. There are a thousand questions that remain unanswered. Let’s fire away:
Is this for real?
It certainly seems that way. As every former prosecutor and FBI agent on Twitter has pointed out—and contrary to what Trump wants his zombie followers to believe—the Bureau doesn’t run around arbitrarily raiding private residences and cracking safes. This was not some fishing expedition:
To be able to search the premises, the federal agents must have secured a warrant from a federal judge—which would only be granted if there were evidence of a major crime hiding at that tacky golf club.
Too, Merrick Garland, who must have authorized such an unprecedented action, is not exactly known for his maverick, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later attitude. The guy is as by-the-book as it gets—frustratingly so. He’s a veritable black hole of swagger. Christopher Wray, Chris Christie’s former attorney who was Trump’s pick to run the FBI, signed off on it, too. Bottom line, there’s no way the feds would raid the home of a former president unless there was a very compelling reason to do so. There’s gold in them thar hills.
On the other hand, all that happened yesterday is that federal agents searched Mar-a-Lago for evidence. No one was indicted. No one was arrested. We may not see the fruits of this for months—or ever. They might not have found what they were looking for. Godot might show up before they bust Trump.
Why did Trump release the statement?
Same reason his namesake son tweeted out those documents before the New York Times could run the story about the Trump Tower meeting—to get ahead of the story and control the narrative. Trump is hoping to enrage his supporters to the point of violence, seems to me. The only way out of this now, he surmises, is civil unrest on an unprecedented scale. Certainly the MAGA die-hards are gathering:
…although the soundtrack is more playlist from Studio 54 than “Flight of the Valkyries.”
Last night on CNN, Dana Bash took great pains to call out the loaded word “raid” as being inaccurate and incendiary. She’s right—but I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I like the idea of the FBI raiding Mar-a-Lago. And I suspect a lot of people do. If you ask me, Trump’s calculus is wrong (go figure). There are a hell of a lot more Americans angry about Dobbs and the Supreme Court than about the FBI investigating a crooked, corrupt private citizen—an inveterate criminal—for breaking the law. And if there aren’t, we’re already doomed.
Is this about the boxes of documents Trump illegally took from the White House when he left?
Maybe. Probably. But we don’t really know. As I tweeted yesterday:
It could just as easily be related to Mark Meadows and the insurrection. Or Ghislaine Maxwell. Or some financial crime that hasn’t been fully disclosed yet. But yeah, it sure looks like Trump is in hot water for doing the same kind of thing he accused Hillary of in 2016, but orders of magnitude worse.
Trump wouldn’t hand over highly classified intelligence information to our enemies, would he?
I mean, he’s done it before. The day after he fired the FBI director for the sin of investigating his (very real) ties to Russia, Trump hosted Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. (and the alleged chief spymaster here), and Sergei Lavrov, last seen trying to spin his country’s atrocities in Ukraine, in the Oval Office. He yukked it up with those two jackals, delightedly dishing about some top secret Israeli operation. And we only know about it because Russian news services released photos.
Go back and read that paragraph again. It’s been normalized by our hapless press, and it never should have been.
In his statement yesterday, Trump, again busting out the German-style capitalized nouns, complained that “[s]uch an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.” No, what happens in broken, corrupt countries is heads of state firing top law enforcement officials for bringing too much heat, and then handing out sensitive intelligence to Russian envoys for $$$.
But isn’t Trump/Russia a hoax, like Trump says?
Trump/Russia was just as real as Kardashian/Davidson, only it’s lasted way longer. Trump’s long ties to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, and the Russian mob have been well documented, on these pages, and in the painstaking work of Craig Unger, Luke Harding, and others.
In an interview published yesterday, Paul Manafort admitted he was in cahoots with a Russian intelligence officer, Konstantin Kilimnik—just as the Senate Intelligence Committee explained in Volume 5. Manafort was the chair of the Trump campaign at the time.
And let’s not forget that Jared Kushner, no stranger to leveraging his status in his father-in-law’s administration to get foreign governments to do things to help him out personally, tried to set up a backchannel to Moscow through the Russian embassy—an idea so wackadoodle even Kislyak chortled.
But he isn’t still in bed with Putin, is he?
Trump is as promiscuous in his dealings with hostile foreign governments as he is in his love life, and no more loyal. Through his son-in-law, he has ties to Benjamin Netanyahu, like him a crook. He has ties to the KSA; I seem to recall a golf event at Bedminster just last week, funded by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, attended by Saudi dignitaries—perfect opportunity to hand over a flash drive, if one were so inclined. And he has ties to the United Arab Emirates, through Erik Prince, who now lives there, and... whatshisname, the guy who looks like a villain from Beverly Hills Cop IV…
Tom Barrack. Do you think Tom Barrack has anything to do with this?
Trump’s real estate chum who’s under federal indictment for working as an agent for the UAE, obstructing justice, and making false statements to law enforcement? The Colony Capital billionaire who’s supposed to go to trial next month and is assumed to be cooperating with the feds? The 75-year-old who put up a quarter billion in bail to stay out of the hoosegow until trial and would likely do anything to avoid doing time? That Tom Barrack?
Well, now that you mention it, that does make a bit of sense. Gregg Smith, a former business associate of the aforementioned Erik Prince who has been jumping up and down trying to spotlight Prince’s criminality, thinks so:
Why would a rich guy like Trump need the money?
I object to the premise of the question. Are we sure Trump is rich? His businesses all fail. He never released his taxes, and the one form we saw showed nine-digit losses for the year. He owed Deutsche Bank a fuck-ton of money when he took office in 2016. And that new toupee he’s sporting looks like he plucked it from the discount rack. This is a guy who would do anything—and I mean that without hyperbole; there’s almost nothing he would not do—for money.
Remember, Trump took no action in the early days of the pandemic because he (stupidly and cruelly) believed that Blue State deaths would help his re-election prospects—and also, almost certainly, because he had figured out a way to make money on it. A million Americans died because of him, and he didn’t give a shit. You really think he would think twice before selling some classified documents to, say, MBS? Please.
What’s buried with Ivana on the first hole at Bedminster?
I’d like to think that Ivana stumbled and fell down the stairs, that her death was a tragic accident, and that her burial at Trump’s golf course was his way of honoring her (and reaping the benefit of a tax break). The fact that so many people have suggested that Ivana’s remains are not the only thing buried at Bedminster speaks volumes as to how shady this motherfucker is. My take is: the whole thing is weird af, but legit.
On the other hand, if this all ends with federal agents exhuming Ivana’s remains looking for evidence—I mean, at this point, would anyone be that surprised?
Photo credit: Wally Gobetz. Mar-a-Lago, 2008.
Jees Louise, Greg. It's a good thing you haven't left for vacation yet!
But let us not forget about the Milley letter as reported in The New Yorker yesterday. Here it is with no paywall:
"I regret to inform you that I intend to resign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thank you for the honor of appointing me as senior ranking officer. The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.
"Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people. The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.
"Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal. All men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans. That under these colors of red, white, and blue—the colors that my parents fought for in World War II—means something around the world. It’s obvious to me that you don’t think of those colors the same way I do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.
"And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war-between-trump-and-his-generals
It was a raid. No word mincing. A raid is an unannounced incursion onto somebody else’s property conducted with overwhelming force for the purpose of removing evidence from that person’s possession. I expect the next raid will be to several properties in New York and New Jersey. Heaven help him if he’s pissed off the archivists by absconding with government documents. You DO NOT want to steal from an archivist. And we know he could never resist waving “top secret” documents around at his guests to impress them with his power, the braggart. What we all want, though, is the arrest warrant.