{"id":13740,"date":"2022-08-09T06:05:28","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T13:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13740"},"modified":"2022-08-09T06:05:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T13:05:28","slug":"the-mar-a-lago-raid-proves-the-u-s-isnt-a-banana-republic-the-atlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13740","title":{"rendered":"“The Mar-a-Lago Raid Proves the U.S. Isn\u2019t a Banana Republic”, The Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David A. Graham, August 8, 2022<\/p>\n

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A bedrock principle is that no one\u2014not even the president, much less the former president\u2014is above the law, and if they commit crimes, they must answer for them<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mar-a-Lago<\/picture><\/div>
John Roca \/ NY Daily News Archive \/ Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Donald Trump would have you believe that Monday\u2019s surprise FBI raid on his Florida estate was, like so many things he disdains, un-American.<\/p>\n

Not much is known about the operation as of this writing. The FBI has not commented, and much of what is public comes from a statement<\/a> by Trump, a notoriously unreliable source of information. Trump wrote, \u201cMy beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,\u201d who he said arrived unannounced and broke into a safe.<\/p>\n

Reporting from The Washington Post<\/a> <\/em>and The New York Times<\/a> <\/em>indicates that the raid appears to be connected to Trump\u2019s removal of records from the White House at the end of his administration, in what critics have said was a clear violation of federal public-records law.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cSuch an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump is right that nothing like this has ever happened to a former<\/em> president of the United States before\u2014he always omits the former<\/em>, a way of refusing to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election\u2014but he\u2019s wrong about what it means about the rule of law in the United States.<\/p>\n

Trump was always more banana republican than Reagan or Lincoln Republican. Unlike his presidential predecessors, and despite his open disdain for Latin America<\/a> and Latin Americans<\/a>, he often styled himself as a sort of caudillo, trying to rule with an iron fist, circumvent the Constitution and legislature, enlist the military into his schemes<\/a>, and use the power of the state to further his own electoral<\/a> and personal<\/a> fortunes. Just today, Susan Glasser and Peter Baker reported<\/a> on how Trump pushed the military to conduct the sort of garish parades that, as one general put it, characterize foreign dictatorships, and complained that U.S. generals were not as loyal to him as Hitler\u2019s top brass was to the f\u00fchrer. And at the end of his term, Trump retired to a palatial estate fringed by palm trees to plot his next moves.<\/p>\n

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In a real banana republic, he might have hoped to live with impunity\u2014as long as he could outwit his political opponents\u2019 schemes. Instead, Trump has found himself beset on many sides. He was impeached, a second time, after leaving office; a district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, continues to investigate his meddling in vote-counting after the election; the New York attorney general is investigating his company, and will soon depose him<\/a>; and a House committee is probing his attempt to overturn the election and pressuring the Justice Department to bring charges against him related to that. (The DOJ has refused to comment on any related investigations.)<\/p>\n

Trump is not the victim of political persecution. A bedrock principle of American law is that no one\u2014not even the president, much less the former president\u2014is above the law, and if they commit crimes, they must answer for them. \u201cWhat is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee?\u201d Trump asked in his statement. But this question is simple enough that any AP U.S. History student could easily manage it: Watergate was an illegal break-in conducted by a team of political operatives, not law-enforcement agents with judicially approved warrants, working for an FBI director appointed by Trump.<\/p>\n

For all Trump\u2019s bluster, he hasn\u2019t been charged with any crimes. If he is, he will have every opportunity to defend himself in court. (Contrast that with his own disdain for due process<\/a>for other people accused of crimes.) Some legal scholars are nervous about the precedent set by potentially prosecuting a former president. But the precedent set by giving him a free pass by virtue of his electoral history would be even more troubling.<\/p>\n

The raid seemed to come out of nowhere, a sign that the federal government is handling this investigation\u2014whatever it is\u2014with great secrecy and delicacy. In the coming days, the public is likely to learn more, including whether White House documents are really the sole or main factor behind the \u201csiege\u201d of Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n

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Even though Trump\u2019s rise to the White House in 2016 owed much<\/a> to \u201cher emails\u201d\u2014Hillary Clinton\u2019s sloppy handling of classified records\u2014his administration was particularly brazen about not maintaining records from the start. Trump ripped up documents at will, leaving teams to comb through the scraps and literally tape them together. On Monday, Axios <\/em>published photos<\/a> that appeared to show notes in a toilet. In recent weeks, news reports have brought attention to the destruction of records by the Secret Service, Pentagon, and Department of Homeland Security relating to the January 6 insurrection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over four years in office, Trump\u2019s behavior was often egregious. He courted\u00a0Russia in 2016<\/a>, was impeached for extorting Ukraine, and topped things off by trying to steal the election. But he largely escaped consequences for these offenses, other than losing in 2020. Could his downfall really be about something as mundane as proper handling of sensitive documents? Justice in the U.S. is still blind, despite his protestation, but that doesn\u2019t mean it lacks a sense of humor.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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David A. Graham<\/a> is a staff writer at The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/address>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David A. Graham, August 8, 2022 A bedrock principle is that no one\u2014not even the president, much less the former president\u2014is above the law, and if they commit crimes, they must answer for them. John Roca \/ NY Daily News Archive \/ Getty Donald Trump would have you believe that Monday\u2019s surprise FBI raid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13740"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13741,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13740\/revisions\/13741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}