Here we go again.
Two weeks ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland approached a lectern at the Department of Justice to announce he "personally" approved the warrant used to justify the unprecedented raid on President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.
This time, the DOJ claims President Trump, who had the power to declassify any document as the commander-in-chief, was secretly keeping "highly classified" documents in the Mar-a-Lago basement. The brouhaha was reportedly kicked off by a bureaucrat at the National Archives, who had been in a battle with Trump over presidential materials he wanted to keep — potentially for his library.
According to Founder and President of the Article III Project and former Supreme Court clerk Mike Davis, who worked for Justice Neil Gorsuch, the claim is bogus and holds no authority.
"The President of the United States has both the constitutional and statutory power to declassify anything he wants. If President Trump left the White House with classified records, they are declassified by his actions. But even if President Trump had classified records in his possession, they were protected. All former Presidents get a federally funded office, security clearances, Secret Service protection, and secure facilities (SCIFs) for classified records," Davis released in a recent statement.
"All Presidents take records when they leave. They don't pack their own boxes. The National Archives takes the position that almost everything is a 'presidential record,' and the federal government writ large over-classifies almost everything. It's routine for any Office of the Former President to negotiate with the National Archives. They could've alerted Congress. The Biden Justice Department could've filed a civil lawsuit. They could've sought and enforced a subpoena," he continued. "Instead, Attorney General Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray found a federal magistrate judge in Palm Beach with an obvious judicial bias against President Trump, obtained an unlawful and unnecessary home warrant, and launched an unprecedented home raid of a former president and President Biden's top political opponent, all for records the former president had for 18 months without issue."
And now, upon release of a blacked-out affidavit used to justify the raid on Mar-a-Lago, we're learning DOJ used a report from a local CBS News affiliate about moving trucks to justify ransacking President Trump's home and First Lady Melania Trump's closet.
"According to a CBS Miami article titled 'Moving Trucks Spotted At Mar-a-Lago,' published Monday January 18, 2021, at least two moving trucks were observed at the PREMISES on January 18, 2021," the DOJ affidavit states. The remaining lines on the page are blacked out.
This is the same pattern we saw throughout President Donald Trump's tenure in the White House. It's simple. The DOJ and FBI accuse Trump of a crime. They leak it to the media or use already published reports to start a firestorm and stoke the rumor mill. Democrats on Capitol Hill get worked up and demand investigations while appearing on cable television to spread rumors of "evidence hiding in plain sight." When asked for the evidence and underlying documents being used to justify the latest witch hunt, DOJ claims they're interested in transparency while providing none — furthering rampant speculation and sowing further distrust in the Department.
It's the same rinse-and-repeat justification used by the DOJ for six years against Trump. Reports in the media are constantly used to justify legal action.
Former Trump presidential advisor Stephen Miller summed up the situation perfectly.
"The idea, spelled out in the affidavit, that the Archives sicced the FBI on President Trump—on the premise that unelected bureaucrats, not POTUS, had final authority on national security—can only be construed as an attempt to overthrow our entire democratic constitutional order," Miller said.
There is no credibility or trust left, and the American people are tired of it.
