It’s barely 24 hours since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was revealed. My post, This is a provocation. They are trying to get a reaction that allows a further crackdown, has been shared widely.
There’s no doubt that the way the raid was carried out was deliberately provocative. It was meant to get a reaction at multiple levels. But as Andy McCarthy and others have speculated, it’s possible the pretense of the raid leaked to the press — failure to return presidential documents including possibly classified documents — was just a ruse to get the Feds inside the building:
The Justice Department obviously used the potential classified information as a pretext to obtain a warrant so it could search for what it is really looking for: evidence that would tie Trump to a Capitol riot offense – either a violent crime, such as seditious conspiracy to forcibly attack a government installation (which is highly unlikely), or a non-violent crime, such as conspiracy to obstruct the January 6 joint session of Congress to count electoral votes, or conspiracy to defraud the government.
This wide-sweep theory just gained more support, with Fox News reporting the seizure the day after the Mar-a-Lago raid of a cell phone from a close Trump ally, Republican Rep. Scott Perry:
Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania says that the FBI has confiscated his cellphone.
Perry, in an exclusive statement, told Fox News on Tuesday that while traveling with his family earlier in the day, he was approached by three FBI agents who handed him a warrant and requested that he turn over his cellphone.
The confiscation of the congressman’s personal phone comes one day after FBI agents searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
“This morning, while traveling with my family, 3 FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish. I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress,” Perry said in his statement.
“My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business.”
National Review notes Perry’s interaction with the January 6 Committee:
Though it is unclear from the Fox News report why agents seized Perry’s phone, the action comes three months after the House committee on the January 6 Capitol riot subpoenaed Perry along with House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Andy Biggs of Arizona. All five Republican lawmakers had declined the panel’s requests to voluntarily cooperate. It is extraordinarily rare for a congressional committee to subpoena sitting members of Congress.
Perry condemned the panel’s dramatic move at the time, saying, “That this illegitimate body leaked their latest charade to the media ahead of contacting targeted Members is proof positive once again that this political witch hunt is about fabricating headlines and distracting the Americans from their abysmal record of running America into the ground.”
Perry, who supported Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, was reportedly in contact with the Trump White House numerous times in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot.
This follows the June 2022 search of the home of Trump-supportive Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Clark.
There’s obviously a full-on DOJ-FBI effort to get Trump on something. That’s part of what’s happening here. But there’s probably a lot that we don’t know about how that is going to happen. I think we’ll find out right after the midterms when DOJ/FBI slam down whatever hammer they think they have.