While multiple news outlets have reported that the search warrant served by the FBI at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Palm Beach, Florida was as a result of his handling of classified documents he took from the White House, there is now a dissenting opinion regarding why the Justice Department authorized the move.
Writing in National Review, Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, says the real purpose of the search warrant was to obtain information about Trump’s role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. And he also makes clear this was not a “raid” as Trump and his defenders are calling it:
This was not a raid, in the sense of a lawless break-in. The FBI conducted a court-authorized search. For the FBI to have a search warrant, a federal prosecutor first had to write a search-warrant application, sworn to by an FBI agent, which convinced a federal judge that (a) one or more crimes probably occurred and (b) it was probable that evidence of those crimes would be found in the place the Justice Department was asking to search.
Does Trump have classified documents? McCarthy suspects he does, noting:
From the DOJ’s perspective, there was a probability that the classified documents Trump returned had for months been kept in an unauthorized place. Moreover, because Trump did not return to the National Archives everything that was shipped to Mar-a-Lago in January 2021, he likely still has classified documents it may be unlawful for him to possess.
But is the Justice Department really that interested in documents that might have been classified?
As a prosecutable crime, I am betting the Biden Justice Department is not very interested in this. The DOJ is very interested, however, in the Capitol riot, and it is under intense pressure from the Democratic base to charge Trump with crimes arising out of it.
McCarthy concludes that Justice is most interested in Trump and Jan. 6:
The Justice Department is trying to make a Capitol riot case, but Garland is not sure at this point that he has one he’s comfortable bringing. And since it would be explosive to signal that Trump is the subject of a Capitol riot investigation, the DOJ is trying to investigate him as such without saying so.
Which is a bigger crime: Hoarding classified documents or trying to carry out a coup? The answer to that question seems clear, and it probably did to the attorney general as well.
