The news that the FBI served a search warrant at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home sent shockwaves throughout the country. It was an unprecedented action, the first time something like that had ever happened to a former President. The supposed pretext for the raid, the alleged mishandling of classified documents, was hardly a matter to set such a dangerous precedent. And the FBI’s decision will likely have long lasting and far reaching consequences.
The most important thing to draw from the FBI’s action in the short-term is to realize that the Executive Branch is now running amok. Let’s not forget that the “Russian collusion” hoax was carried out with the full knowledge of senior officials at the FBI who had it in for Trump.
When he won in 2016, those same officials came after Trump and his associates, including high-ranking officials such as National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Trump retaliated as best he could, although he received bad advice from people like Attorney General Bill Barr and didn’t clean house at the Department of Justice like he should have. And now he’s paying the price.
One of the most astounding things about the FBI’s raid at Mar-a-Lago is the fact that no one thought to inform the White House. You would think that breaking a centuries-old precedent for a paperwork violation would at least warrant giving the big boss a heads up. But Executive Branch agencies have become so emboldened by thumbing their noses at the President, behavior they began under Trump, that they’re continuing that same behavior under Biden.
Executive Branch officials don’t care anymore who the President is. They think they’re the boss, and they almost dare the President to contradict them.
When underlings start to act out like this, and the President can no longer control them, that’s dangerous. Remember how the Soviet Union fell, when Gorbachev could no longer control Soviet security forces who sought to keep the Union from falling apart by invading the Baltic republics. His inability to keep the factions within his government from acting on their own eventually brought about an open coup that eventually resulted in the fall of the Soviet regime.
We may not be quite to that level of insubordination in the US just yet, but the raid on Mar-a-Lago demonstrated that security forces in the US have no qualms about doing things on their own, attempting to settle a score against Trump, even if that means going it alone and doing it without White House approval or even knowledge.
The President of El Salvador may have expressed it best when he asked what the US reaction would have been if he had used his police forces to raid the home of a future electoral rival. Those comments should have hit close to home, because we know that he’s right. If this had been any other country in which this had occurred, the US very likely would have declared this an abuse of power and gotten on its high horse about how it subverts the democratic process, etc. etc. etc. But with Trump, principles go out the window.
Perhaps even worse, half of our population is so blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome that they don’t see the terrible developments that are occurring in our country. Whether we’re becoming a banana republic or going the way of the Soviet Union towards a breakup, these developments aren’t something that those who love peace and prosperity should welcome. They’re dangerous indicators that the American way of life we have enjoyed could be coming to an end, possibly sooner than we realize. And unless we’re prepared for that, we’re going to have a very rude awakening when that end finally comes.