Column By Mike Bibb
“Frankly [I didn’t] give a damn about the optics of the recovery operation.”
Deputy Assistant General George Toscas commenting on the FBI’s Aug. 8, 2022, armed incursion on former President Trump’s home in South Florida. – New York Post, May 21, 2024.
As expected, the FBI’s August 2022 massive aggression on Trump’s home in South Florida is beginning to show signs of Department of Justice overreach.
Certainly, overreaction.
Equipped with semi-automatic firearms, bolt cutters, and related equipment used in entering and seizing a suspect’s home, the FBI must have thought the intended target was some kind of drug lord, in possession of large quantities of cocaine, fentanyl, heroin, and bundles of cash.
At least, that was the appearance – but not the reason.
Unlike the current White House, no cocaine, fentanyl, or heroin was found.
There were, however, government documents locked in a room, protected by Secret Service personnel.
The suspect isn’t a crime kingpin or some kind of Mafioso. He doesn’t speak Spanish, Italian or Sicilian.
Actually, he’s a legitimate American businessman, worth several billion dollars, a former President of the United States, and the current leading Republican candidate for reelection to that office.
Yet, because people within the DOJ believe he shouldn’t be in possession of classified records, dozens of FBI troopers were deployed to physically enter his home and confiscate the documents.
Prompting one to wonder, were the gun-toting federal officers anticipating a shootout with the former President and his Secret Service security detail? If not, why all the agents and weaponry?
Also, how many FBI personnel does it take to look for and haul off a few cartons of records and papers? 20? 30? More?
All of this nonsense took ten hours to complete. Why?
They had a search warrant, of course, but that’s a constitutional formality. Like a “ham sandwich” indictment from a Grand Jury, any DOJ department honcho can probably request a warrant with a mere phone call.
As noted, ten hours later the “recovery operation” was concluded. FBI took control of the sought-after records, and the parade of vehicles and agents exited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort.
Results of the task were immediate: Trump was made to look like an Underworld mobster, the press blathered for weeks of his apparent corruption, and he would be indicted in a year on numerous federal charges.
By this time, Trump had been out of office for about three years. Coincidentally, the timing of the affair happened to coincide with the 2024 Presidential campaign season.
Little mention that prior to all this secret document yammering about Trump, Joe Biden had already illegally extracted dozens of classified records long before he was president.
These items have been located in eight or nine separate locations, including his home’s garage and a University of Pennsylvania office and at the University of Delaware.
Trump maintains he had the lawful authority – as President – to select the documents he wished to remove. That doesn’t appear to be the dispute. It’s the claim the National Archives insist the papers are their responsibility.
In effect, the two are arguing over who should have the records. Isn’t that what courts are for? Is the DOJ now resorting to a platoon of armed agents to grab a bunch of government records from a former President who believes he should have them?
Equally important, are the documents less safe in Trump’s hands than the National Archives where folks — like Joe, for instance – can walk in, snatch a few, and walk out?
It’s beginning to appear that way.
As far as Joe is concerned, he was not President until noon, on Jan. 20, 2021, despite the fact he knowingly pilfered similar confidential records years ago when he was a senator.
This raises the question, why was Biden stealing these papers, what was he doing with them, and why were they found in so many places?
Unlike now, he can’t claim his mind was muddled. He knew exactly what he was doing when he was doing it.
Money – gobs of it — is usually the motive in these kinds of intrigues.
Unfortunately, that was then, and this is now. The revelation of these capers has prompted Joe’s DOJ to begin a cleanup campaign by portraying him as too cognitively disconnected to realize or remember what he had done or when he did it.
A DOJ Special Prosecutor remarked a trial jury would likely find Joe to be “an elderly man with a poor memory.” Insinuating, he wouldn’t be convicted because of his age, and he wasn’t in his right mind. The jury would pity him.
Recently, Joe issued an Executive Order denying Congress access to information within the Special Council’s report. The document also contains data he doesn’t want to be made public
Especially during the campaign season.
However, the excuse is baffling: How can he avoid prosecution by claiming excessive brain drain, while at the same time actively campaigning for reelection as the Democratic Presidential candidate?
Even a True-Blue-Through-N-Through Democrat will have a little difficulty explaining that one. Joe may be too mentally confused to stand trial, but he’s not confused enough to prevent him from sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, looking around, shaking his head in bewilderment, and desperately trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
I’m sure there must be some kind of clinical definition explaining the apparent contradiction between the two situations, but in Joe’s world it’s just another ordinary day.
Or is it as simple as recognizing what Trump is being accused of, the Democrats have been doing all along?
So, while Trump is facing numerous federal charges involving documents removal, and could serve multiple years in prison if convicted, tired old Uncle Joe, who committed nearly identical wrongdoings, has never been indicted or had his home assaulted by swarms of FBI officers.
Why is that? What’s the difference in the law that allows the DOJ to actively pursue Trump’s alleged crimes, while they look the other way when Biden is discovered to have been doing virtually the same thing – and probably making money from it – a decade before Trump was elected?
Do we have equal fairness from the prosecution, bench, and jury, or has our rule of law devolved into a politically motivated “Show me the person – I’ll show you the crime” system of accusations to be decided by a bought and paid government-sanctioned legal apparatus?
Similar to what we’re currently seeing in New York.
If a non-crime can become a crime, a misdemeanor turned into a felony, assisted by a trial judge proceeding however he pleases, and a jury allowed to render a verdict based upon manufactured evidence, then the previously respected scales of justice have been abused and diminished to a forgotten memory in American jurisprudence.
The opinions in this editorial are those of the author.
