A search conducted by FBI agents on the estate of former US President Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago stirred up all of America.
The past week has passed in the United States in a heated debate around this event and the possible consequences for Trump himself and for the country.
But the most interesting, of course, is yet to come.
On Monday morning, August 8, about a hundred armed FBI agents surrounded Trump's luxurious Florida estate (he himself was not there at that moment) and, presenting a search warrant, went inside.
They searched the former president's office, his bedroom and pantry, opened Trump's personal safe and took 20 boxes of documents.
Among other things - four sets of documents marked "top secret", three sets of documents marked "secret" and three marked "confidential".
According to US regulations, "confidential" means the lowest level of secrecy.
Such information could, if disclosed, cause "definable harm" to national security.
The next level is “secret” information, its disclosure can cause “serious damage”.
The stamp "top secret" is put on documents,
However, this became known only by the end of the week, when the Ministry of Justice published a search warrant and lists of seized items.
According to the warrant, signed, to everyone's amazement, by a lower court judge (a magistrate judge is not even a district judge, but what is called "global" in Russia), agents could seize anything that could be related to the Trump presidency, that is they were not looking for something specific, but rowing, as they say, with a broad nonsense.
But the main question is why such a frankly impudent raid was needed at all?
“All they had to do was ask,” the ex-president wondered.
Trump willingly cooperated with the National Archives and Records Administration, which requested documents from him - at the beginning of the year he gave 15 boxes of papers to the archive in Washington, suggesting that they would be used for a future library named after him.
“The papers were handed over easily, without conflict and in a very friendly manner…,” Trump said.
“In fact, it was seen as a routine, not something important.
I was told that I was not required to provide this material based on various legal decisions over the years."
Amazing naivete!
Perhaps the employees of the National Archives did indeed communicate with him quite friendly, but this did not stop them from turning to the US Department of Justice with a complaint that “clearly classified information” was found in the papers that Trump handed over to them, as well as “torn documents”.
It was then that everything began to spin: the Ministry of Justice launched a check on the alleged mishandling of the former president with the documents of the White House, not only after he resigned as president, but also - attention!
during his tenure.
In other words, the first thing they tried to incriminate Trump was that he tore (literally with his hands) certain documents that should have been preserved for history.
It turns out that the United States has a Presidential Records Act, passed in 1978, requiring that any notes, letters, emails and other documents related to the activities of the president of the country be stored and transferred to the National Archives Administration.
The problem for Trump's enemies is that there is absolutely no enforcement mechanism in the law that he allegedly violated - in other words, the ex-president can only be scolded.
But it is known, after all, that the USA is a country of lawyers, and a cunning judicial hook will always find the right law or a loophole in it.
Before the FBI agents had left the estate, a curious entry appeared on Twitter of Mark Elias, a lawyer who worked in 2016 for the election campaign of Hillary Clinton.
“The media is missing a very, very important reason why today’s raid is a potential blockbuster in American politics,” Elias wrote, not without glee, referring to Section 18 §2071 of the US Federal Code.
Under this paragraph, a person who conceals or destroys records from the presidential archive is punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to three years, but most importantly, deprivation of the right to hold any public office.
There is no doubt that knocking Trump out of the list of possible contenders for the presidency of the United States in 2024 is the main goal of the organizers of the search.
On Thursday, August 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally opened his mouth and admitted that he had personally approved the request for a warrant required to search the Trump home based on three laws.
The most curious of these is §793, taken from the Espionage Act of 1917, enacted during the First World War.
The loud name of this law should not be misleading.
We are talking about punishment for "gross negligence" in the handling of classified and confidential information, as well as for failure to report the loss or destruction of this information.
That is, in principle, everything is the same as in the Presidential Records Act of 1978, only with very specific criminal liability.
Ironically, Trump himself tightened the scale of this responsibility: under him, in 2018, violation of § 793 became punishable by imprisonment for up to five years.
It sounds pretty menacing, but applying the espionage law to the ex-president will not be easy.
The point here is the precedent - the scandal with the missing letters of Hillary Clinton.
33,000 emails, some of them top secret, have disappeared - reasonably believed to have been deleted by Hillary herself from the private mail server she used while serving as US Secretary of State in the Obama administration.
And in 2015, former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey made a sensational statement: if it is proved that it was she who deleted the letters, Clinton could be deprived of the right to hold elected office.
And Hillary confidently walked to the presidency, and a whole bunch of legal scholars serving the Democratic Party fell upon Mukasey, especially emphasizing that the use of this law against presidential candidates would be unconstitutional.
Among those
A lot of noise was also made then by information leaked to the media about a secret meeting between the then head of the Department of Justice Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton on board the Attorney General's plane at the Phoenix airport.
A few days later, Lynch announced that the Justice Department had decided not to press charges against Hillary and would close the investigation into her private email server.
And the liberal media, which came to the defense of Clinton, argued that the Espionage Act was too imperfect and generally outdated.
Of course, now no one likes to remember this.
But the childish delight of the left - how, how, Trump is being investigated under the same law, for the violation of which he proposed to put Hillary behind bars!
- can play into the hands of the ex-president.
Especially against the backdrop of Attorney General Garland's pathetic words: "Respect for the rule of law means the equal application of the law without fear or preference."
Because if Trump is punished for forgiving Hillary, it will mean confirming another, more ancient rule: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.
The ex-president himself insists that all the documents he kept on the estate were not secret.
“Firstly, it was all declassified.
Second, they didn't have to "capture" anything.
They could have it anytime they wanted without playing politics or breaking into Mar-a-Lago,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social.
It is obvious that the president has the power to declassify (as well as classify) any information.
And if there is at least one witness who confirms that Trump, while still the owner of the Oval Office, declassified documents, which he then took with him to Florida, then the entire line of accusation will collapse.
You never know what is written on the boxes - maybe the secretary just forgot to peel off the stickers!
But what Trump’s enemies have achieved for sure is the growth of social tension in the country.
Already on Monday evening, social networks literally exploded with calls to protect "our Donald."
Attorney General Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Bureau agents who broke into Mar-a-Lago were threatened.
And the most desperate Trumpists began to call for a revolution.
“All it takes is one call,” wrote one.
“And millions will arm themselves and take back this country.
It will all be over in less than two weeks."
"Let's start!
This unelected, illegitimate regime crossed the line with its GESTAPO raid!
It is high time to cleanse American society of the liberal socialist filth!”
is a typical post on the Gab social network these days.
And some have already begun to act.
On Thursday in Cincinnati, a Trump supporter attempted to break into the local FBI office with an assault rifle.
It ended tragically - in a shootout, the "lone revolutionary" died.
The Attorney General and the director of the FBI, which the right-wingers call nothing other than the "Gestapo", do not part with armed guards.
Numerous rallies of Trump supporters are gathering across the country - from Palm Beach to Long Island.
In the persecution of America's most popular politician, Americans saw an attack on their own freedoms and the shadow of leftist fascism creeping over the country.
“Now the FBI is the Gestapo,” former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon said on Fox News.
“We are talking about pure power politics.
They are scared to death of Trump.
They are completely petrified with horror that he will announce in a couple of weeks (about entering the race. -
K.B.
), win the Republican nomination and the White House.
New York State Republican congressional candidate Carl Paladino also speaks of “Gestapo tactics.”
The attack on Trump was conceived and carried out by shadowy "deep state" players who are probably pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Speaking of a handful of "unelected people running the government," Paladino points to the "still very active" former President Barack Obama, who operates through the likes of Ron Klein (White House Chief of Staff) and Susan Rice (former Obama's national security officer, now director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council).
And all of them, in turn, "come from the world of (George. -
K.B.
) Soros."
You can, of course, argue that all this is conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories.
But America, in which the FBI is indistinguishable from the secret police of the Third Reich, the US Department of Justice acts as a front for invisible puppeteers, and the former president becomes a target for political persecution - unfortunately, not fiction, but reality.
In 1935.
Sinclair Lewis wrote a cautionary tale about the victory of fascism in the United States called It's Impossible With Us.
After 87 years, the impossible has become possible.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.