The two weeks that have passed since the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago feel like something we’ve experienced before. It’s not just that Donald Trump is dominating the headlines again — it’s that all the hits of 2017 and 2018 are being played again.
Legal experts assembling complex theories from fragmentary information, prompting speculation on Twitter about espionage and betrayal, a “this time we got him” spirit not seen since the days of Robert Mueller’s votive candles.
This familiarity is useful: thanks to it, we can look back and analyze why they didn’t “get him” at the time, why “Russiagate” ended relatively disappointingly and put Republicans in a permanent distrust of any investigation into Trumpian transgressions.
The investigation involving Russia was based – in the public eye and, at least in part, on its legal origins – on dark and dramatic hypotheses: that Trump had been cultivated by Moscow to be an agent of Russian influence, that his campaign and the Russians would have in fact collaborated to hack and disseminate emails from the Democratic National Committee (and good God, there might have been a pee video).
None of these scenarios has been proven by the investigation. As many Trump critics were quick to argue, Mueller’s report did not excuse the president and his campaign from wrongdoing.
But the found or suggested guilt involved many things done in broad daylight in an election that Trump won (encouraging Russian hackers and promoting the information released), things that were tried but never came to fruition (a few unfortunate attempts, at the level of what appears to be in the film “Burn After Reading”, from contacting Russian sources of harmful information) and possible obstructions of justice committed in the course of the investigation.
Meanwhile, it was also clear that the investigation itself was guilty of abuse, especially in the way the FBI obtained search warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
And there was an evident feedback loop between these investigative excesses and the overheated media coverage. The fact that the investigation was recklessly using Steele’s infamous dossier as a premise encouraged journalists to amplify the extreme scenarios proposed by the dossier, because after all, according to them, if the FBI was taking them seriously, they could only be very serious.
Thus, the investigation concluded by reminding everyone that Trump is a schemer who only defends his own interests and lives surrounded by vulgar hacks. But it also made the FBI and the press look like they had gone too far in their quest for a Watergate-style ending. And, in the eyes of Trump supporters, the second part inevitably took on far greater weight, leading them to feel confirmed in their belief that whatever sins their man might commit, the deep state pursued him relentlessly. .
Now, here we are again, and like the decisions of Robert Mueller and James Comey in the past, Merrick Garland’s choices are guided by facts that the public does not have direct access to. But I sincerely hope that the Secretary of Justice kept the “Russiagate” experience in mind when he authorized the magazine at Mar-a-Lago, and that he will keep in mind how Mueller’s investigation ended when he considers his next move.
The lesson to be learned is not, emphatically, that Trump should be granted permanent immunity because of some “no arresting former presidents” rule or fear that his supporters will take to the streets or launch one-off attacks against the FBI.
The lesson, instead, is that if state agents go after Trump, and especially now, when they go as representatives of an administration that could face Trump in the next election, they cannot afford to be wrong.
Not only on the jury bench, but also in the court of public opinion, it needs to be clear and crystal-clear what differentiates any crimes Trump might be accused of, for example, the perjury and obstruction of justice that did not send Bill Clinton to court. arrest or breach of intelligence protocols for which Hillary Clinton has not been criminally charged.
It doesn’t just take a plausible legal argument that tests interesting questions about presidential declassification powers — it takes an irrefutable, easy-to-explain argument.
So if you have Trump taking nuclear weapons design projects and selling them to his friends in Saudi Arabia, congratulations: you got him and you can put him in jail. If you have Trump taking boxes of letters from leaders of other countries just because he’s a childish egomaniac who thinks he deserves to take their souvenirs from the White House, then declare the public interest victory and stop there.
And if he took documents from his own investigation into Russian involvement, documents of the kind he wanted to be revealed during his presidency — if that is the case, be very careful not to get us caught in a horrible time loop in which we will relive 2017 forever.
It seems reasonable to assume that the documents in question are more serious than a few letters to Kim Jong-un, but that the potential incrimination doesn’t reach the point where Trump has literally sold secrets. But this is an assumption, not a premise.
I’ve learned not to be surprised by Trump’s folly and venality, but not by his ability to mislead people and institutions that, before his rise, I would have seen as relatively sensible.
So, no predictions, just a warning: don’t miss the mark.
