There is much to make—and much more to come—about recent disclosures related to the FBI’s nine-hour armed raid of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022.
Most of the current controversy revolves around the Department of Justice’s authorization to use deadly force if necessary that day. Despite widespread outrage that Joe Biden’s DOJ included the language in the pre-raid operations plan, some former federal officials and self-styled conservative “influencers” continue to defend the move as merely representing “standard operating procedure”—as if a similar situation exists in U.S. history to bolster such a brazen claim.
But of course no aspect of the unprecedented, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous raid to allegedly recover classified papers from Donald Trump’s sprawling estate was normal. And dispute over the legality of the warrant and how the raid was conducted is beginning to unfold under the side-eye of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon in southern Florida.
The Trump-appointed judge is presiding over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s espionage and obstruction indictment against the former president and two co-defendants. But things are going from bad to worse for the special counsel, as I explained here; the case is imploding amid disclosures of mishandled and misplaced evidence and rising discord between Cannon and Smith’s