The FBI’s raid last week on the home of former President Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, ostensibly for the purpose of retrieving documents containing classified information pertinent to national security, has undermined public trust in federal law enforcement and the Department of Justice (DOJ), experts say.
No Rush to Judgment
Opinion within the legal community is divided as to the legality of the raid; it’s important not to jump to conclusions as more details about the deliberations and the legal basis for it—if any—continue to emerge, legal experts caution.Mark Graber, a law professor at the University of Maryland, dismissed theories raised by Trump and allies suggesting that “the FBI is controlled by the radical left in the United States or that it is there to persecute the Republican Party.”
Rather, he said, “there may be some reason to believe that the FBI is searching Donald Trump’s residence because they have significant evidence and believe that they will find something illegal.”
Graber described the raid as an event that didn’t happen spontaneously or without any warning, but rather, as the culmination of a process in which the National Archives made requests to Trump for a return of documents taken from the White House at the time of his departure last year, and waited a long time before receiving only some of the requested items.
“These requests had been going on for months. Should they have sent one more email, saying, ‘Please return the documents’? I can’t say, but it’s very clear, the government tried to play nice and got nowhere,” Graber told The Epoch Times.
Double Standards?
Federal law enforcement may be vulnerable to charges of having double standards and having subjected Trump to treatment that others with political views more congenial to the current administration have avoided.Graber said it’s likely that Trump’s legal team will make the case that the DOJ applied standards to Trump from which other political figures have been exempt.
“We should expect Trump’s lawyers are going to argue that Trump was singled out, they will argue that the FBI never raided Hillary Clinton’s home” during the scandal that arose over her alleged mishandling of classified information ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Graber said.
While law enforcement agencies in theory have a responsibility to carry out their duties in a politically neutral manner, Graber said the unavoidable reality is that interpretations of the law will vary from one administration to another.
‘Sad Story’
Graber said that the Biden administration isn’t investigating Republican political figures en masse, and if anything, some Democrats are disappointed with what they see as the relative paucity of enforcement actions.“We don’t see the Biden administration investigating Republican after Republican,” he said.
But for other observers and commentators, the FBI has committed an invasion of privacy that cannot fail to erode public trust in the Bureau and recall abuses of power more typically associated with the authoritarian regimes and dictatorships that were common during the Cold War.
Van B. Poole, a former member of Florida’s state Senate and former chair of the Florida Republican Party who works today as a political consultant, told The Epoch Times that many Floridians he has spoken to in recent days object vehemently to the raid and have given up affording the Bureau any credibility.
“It’s a sad story, because people have always looked up to the FBI, and the leadership is really giving the Bureau a bad name, and the rank and file, men and women who work hard for the FBI, are getting the brunt of it, and people don’t trust them now at all,” Poole said.
“Attorney General Merrick Garland is just a puppet doing what the administration wants, and this is terrible for the country,” he added.
Poole said he couldn’t think of a time during his time in the Florida Senate, from 1979 to 1983, or his chairmanship of the state Republican Party, from 1989 to 1993, when such public friction existed between federal law enforcement and the rights and liberties of the people of the state.
Not Reassured
In public remarks delivered in Washington on Aug. 18, Garland defended the legality and appropriateness of the DOJ’s actions, adding that the decision to seek the search warrant was one that he personally approved.“Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor. Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing,” he said.
Garland’s remarks didn’t reassure all observers about the operation’s legality or the politically neutral stance of the DOJ.
In Conley’s view, this matter may have arisen partly out of the chaos of the transition when Trump prepared to leave the White House and as the events of Jan. 6, 2021, unfolded.
Conley sees a double standard at work in the FBI’s treatment of Trump, as compared to federal law enforcement’s failure to probe the Bidens over the contents of the younger Biden’s laptop.
A Foreign Perspective
For some people in Romania today, the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago is a chilling reminder of the kind of abuse of state authority and police power that they took pains to outlaw after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989.“In Romania today, it is illegal to search someone’s home if the person is not there to witness the search. Any item seized when the homeowner is not present is not admissible in a court of law,” Alexandra Ares, a writer, playwright, and journalist based in Bucharest, told The Epoch Times.
“Police can enter someone’s residence only in the presence of the homeowner or one of his legal representatives (maids and service staff don’t qualify), regardless of the emergency. Before they arrive, the agents must wait outside,” Ares said.
Agents must then state their name to the homeowner or the latter’s legal representative, and every move they make within the property will be filmed.
“No unidentified agents can just walk inside someone’s house unattended. These procedures were put in place after the fall of communism in 1989. Romanians are very surprised that U.S. law allowed for the Mar-a-Lago raid and consider this an egregious breach, something that would happen in Congo or Bangladesh or some other militarized, totalitarian regime,” Ares said.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.