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END TRUMP RAID SECRECY. There's a line at the end of an Axios newsletter that sums up everything that is wrong about media coverage and public discussion of the FBI's unprecedented raid on the home of former President Donald Trump. "These investigations are top secret," Axios's Mike Allen wrote. "So more likely than not, we won't get the full picture any time soon."
The bad word is secret. Excessive secrecy gave rise to wild, absolutely crazy speculation during the years of the Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation. Little bits of information would leak, upon which journalists and other talking heads would build elaborate structures of speculation. In no time, supposedly reasonable people were fantasizing about the president of the United States being a Russian asset. It was nuts, but that's how secrecy and speculation work together. In the end, of course, a lengthy special counsel investigation could not establish that any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign ever occurred, much less who might have been involved in it. But the damage done by all that speculation remained.
Now, the FBI has searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump's home in Palm Beach, Florida. Why did they do it? Here is the weird thing about the raid: There has been lots and lots of public discussion about the Justice Department's Jan. 6 investigation. Prosecutors are supposedly investigating the former president for, among other things, allegedly obstructing an official proceeding, meaning the Jan. 6, 2021, congressional certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes. A grand jury is involved. Some former top Trump aides have testified.
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So, there's already a Justice Department investigation of Trump. Then comes the raid on Mar-a-Lago. The immediate thought is that it has to be part of the department's Jan. 6 inquiry. And then comes word that no, that's not it at all — instead, it was somehow about Trump's handling of classified documents and whether or not he turned over to the National Archives all the documents he possessed from his presidential years, as is required by the Presidential Records Act.
What??? They raided Mar-a-Lago over a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act? Really? It seems an insanely disproportionate thing to do. What the FBI did is without precedent in American history. Would they take such a momentous step over an archival matter? Indeed, on Tuesday morning, Politico wrote, "One perplexing aspect of the Mar-a-Lago search, at least to some legal analysts, is the crime reportedly being investigated does not seem to match the unprecedented tactic of an FBI raid on a former president's residence."
Indeed, it does not. There are a few possible explanations. One is that the Justice Department just got carried away. "Almost inconceivable to me that Justice would raid a former president's home over a simple document-handling violation. Assume there's much more to it," tweeted the Washington Post's Megan McArdle. "But always mindful that folks engaged in a consuming project — like investigating a former president — sometimes lose perspective." Maybe the Justice Department, under pressure from Democrats to get Trump any way possible, simply lost perspective. Or maybe top department officials really think a document-handling violation is so important that law enforcement should, for the first time in U.S. history, raid the home of a former president of the United States.
Or maybe it really is about Jan. 6. A search warrant based on Justice Department allegations about alleged mishandling of presidential documents would get agents inside Mar-a-Lago. Once inside, they might, in the course of their searching, come up with evidence about something else — say, Jan. 6, or some other topic of interest. The presidential records issue got them through the door, perhaps for bigger purposes.
So, can it really be a documents case? In 2005, Sandy Berger, who had been President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, was caught stealing and destroying classified documents from the National Archives. Berger ended up pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor count. The Justice Department recommended he be fined $10,000 with no jail time. The judge raised the fine to $50,000, and Berger also had to perform 100 hours of community service. Berger had to give up his security clearance for three years, but then he got it back.
Does that sound like the kind of crime for which the Justice Department would take the unprecedented step of raiding a former president's residence? "They've crossed the Rubicon here," anti-Trump attorney George Conway said of the Justice Department Tuesday morning. "Not even Richard Nixon's house in San Clemente was searched by the FBI, as far as I know." Attorney General Merrick Garland, Conway continued, "doesn't do things rashly. You have to conclude there's something behind the curtain that would surprise us."
Maybe there is. Maybe there isn't. The fact is, we just don't know. In that knowledge vacuum, all sorts of poisonous speculation will grow. And that is why the Justice Department owes the public some answers.
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