Ticker Views
Attorney General Merrick Garland: the iceberg cometh for Trump
A week later and Washington, the political class, the media and much of the country are still reeling from the USS Trump’s collision with the iceberg that is the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland
Only a portion of the AG’s work is visible above the surface, but beneath is a massive juggernaut that can inflict serious damage on those who collide with it. Trump is listing, his momentum slowed.
Trump does not own the documents from his presidency, whether they were classified or not, whether he took them out of the White House or not, whether he destroyed any or not.
The website of the National Archives of the United States is absolutely clear:
The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. ß2201-2209, governs the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents that were created or received after January 20, 1981 (i.e., beginning with the Reagan Administration). The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents, and subsequently NARA [National Archives], must manage the records of their Administrations.
No president, current or former, owns presidential records. The American people do.
Trump took boxes of documents from the White House on January 20, 2021, the day he left office and became the former president. The National Archives has tried to track those down and have them returned ever since. Finally, after months of efforts, several boxes were recovered. But not all, and the Archives obtained a subpoena for the rest. Trump never responded to it. Finally, after showing a Federal judge the necessity of recovering the documents – principally because of the national security implications of the materials – the AG obtained a search warrant and Garland approved the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Multiple boxes and documents were recovered.
No former president has ever been subject to such a law enforcement action.
Richard Nixon was pardoned for his Watergate crimes by President Gerald Ford, insulating him from further investigation. No other former president has aroused any such concerns about the lawfulness of their activities after leaving office. No other former president was impeached twice or treated the basic rules of the handling of intelligence matters with such contempt.
For Trump – and especially for Trump’s base and his supporters, who yearn for his restoration – the raid was a vicious persecution by the Deep State, the Regime, who wants him destroyed politically. . Trump extremists have labelled the FBI as traitorous, and calls to defund the bureau.
But as these events unfolded, and the seriousness of the reckless handling of these documents became evident – especially those that are top secret, and which can only be held and viewed under stringent security protocols – the mood among some Republicans has shifted.
There are real issues here which are adding to the baggage Trump is carrying as he prepares to declare for the 2024 presidential campaign – baggage which makes him less attractive to those Republicans who want to turn the page on Trump and his obsession with the past and instead turn to the future.
What is also extraordinary is how Trump can continue to dominate the news cycle. The intensity of coverage over this last week rivalled the frenzy in 2017-19 over Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia and whether Trump obstructed justice.
The past week has been a breathless, wall-to-wall engagement.
And it has pushed to below the fold on p1 what the current president, Joe Biden, has achieved. Biden has had his best two months since taking office: a black woman jurist has joined the Supreme Court, a bipartisan gun safety bill was signed into law, a bipartisan multibillion program to secure America’ s leadership in computer chips, and all they drive in our economy, is now law. Gasoline prices have declined 20% from their peak. Inflation is slowing. Congress has passed – and Biden will sign into law this week – the largest investment in clean energy in the history of US environmental law, lower prescription drug process and health insurance costs, and minimum taxes on the biggest corporations in the country.
Together with last year’s Covid recovery programs and the trillion-dollar infrastructure investment to rebuild the country, and with leadership with allies on Ukraine – the Senate approved Sweden and Finland joining NATO – Biden now has a record of a consequential president.
A wave of anger about the Trump Supreme Court’s repeal of a woman’s constitutional right to abortion is moving across the country – even in conservative states like Kansas. Women trapped in states hostile to reproductive health care are getting the message: the only way to restore abortion rights is to vote for Democrats.
The bottom line is that prospects for the Democrats for the midterm elections have improved.
The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago follows the weeks of hearings this summer of the January 6 Committee.
What has been presented is an exceptionally compelling case of a conspiracy conceived and executed by Trump and his minions to overturn the presidential election he lost in 2020.
There has been immense pressure by many Democrats, historians, and legal experts for the Attorney General to seek Trump’s indictment for the insurrection and attack on the Capitol.
There has been open frustration from these advocates that Garland, in the face of Trump posing a clear and present danger to America’s democracy, is not moving fast enough – is not sufficiently committed – to bringing Trump to justice.
What the past week shows is that they are only seeing the tip of the Garland iceberg. It is clear from the FBI raid that Garland has been working quietly and deliberately to ensure that Trump is not above the law. There may yet be indictments for violation of the Espionage Act and other national security laws. There is a grand jury currently working on the very issues posed by the insurrection. It is the biggest investigation in the history of the Justice Department. Many witnesses who testified before the January 6 Committee are appearing before the grand jury.
Trump may well collide – again – with the Garland iceberg. It could be titanic.
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