OPINION:
The pattern of politically driven justice has become sickeningly familiar: The Russiagate hoax, then failed impeachment No. 1 followed by futile impeachment No. 2. Next, the cover-up of potential criminality detailed on Hunter Biden’s laptop gives way to the made-for-TV Jan. 6 show trial. Push “play” to watch the next episode: the raid on the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump in search of classified documents. Officialdom cannot be expected to quit its vengeful compulsions until real justice serves it with genuine punishment.
The FBI officials and agents who planned and executed last week’s search and seizure at the Trump Mar-a-Lago estate belong to the very same FBI Counterintelligence Division that conducted the sham investigation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for colluding with Russia, according to RealClearInvestigations reporter Paul Sperry. And for their roles in the earlier, bogus scheme to frame the former president, those involved are under investigation by Special Counsel John Durham, he writes. Accordingly, they should have been recused from any additional Trump case to avoid the taint of prejudicial motivation — but they were not.
Moreover, operatives allied with 2016 presidential race loser Hillary Clinton worked with Justice Department and National Archives officials, Mr. Sperry writes, to trigger the Mar-a-Lago raid as retribution for Mr. Trump’s sensationalizing of the 2016 email scandal in which Hillary narrowly escaped prosecution for mishandling classified documents. In Washington, there is no statute of limitations for vengeance.
Presidents have the prerogative to apportion archival records between personal and public use. Whether that privilege is recognized apparently depends on the president. Despite Mr. Trump’s authority to declassify documents, the FBI cites a possible violation of the Espionage Act as cause for raiding his home and confiscating a couple of dozen boxes. Among them, according to Trump lawyers, is personal material protected by attorney-client privilege that once seen, cannot be unseen. The FBI may have found a less-perilous method of wounding Hillary’s nemesis without using false claims to gain authorization to spy on him.
In glaring contrast, establishment favorite Barack Obama concluded his presidency and transported 30 million pages of administration documents to his Chicago library, according to the New York Post, with the promise to digitize them for public access. Did authorities examine each page for potential classification violations? Yet it is Mr. Trump who is targeted for criminal investigation.
“The FBI goes after Trump again, and this time, it has really blundered,” headlined a Washington Post op-ed by columnist Marc Thiessen. Indeed, the public is reckoning the raid as part and parcel of the serial legal abuse former president has suffered since throwing his hat in the ring for the White House. Already a Politico/Morning Consult poll shows him widening his lead to 10 points over his potential 2024 Republican rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Americans hate persecution.
The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raiders and their bosses deserve the presumption of innocence they haven’t accorded Mr. Trump, but it’s abundantly clear that officialdom’s obsession with harassing the former president will not cease until justice slams the jailhouse door on guilty fingers.
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