“Trust Us” Doesn’t Cut It

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley has written an excellent column explaining why all the demands for us to blindly trust Big Government in the Mar-a-Lago raid just don’t cut it. Most Americans now believe the FBI is little more than “Biden’s personal Gestapo.” 

Attorney General Merrick Garland should have realized the necessity for transparency. But, as Turley points out, Garland missed one opportunity after another to reassure a skeptical public. 

From the negotiations that took place before the raid, to the conduct of the raid itself, to Garland’s inexplicable silence for days after the raid, and now his attempts to keep the affidavit secret – it all looks suspicious and far from reassuring.

But Turley zeroes in on the search warrant itself, writing, “It allowed the seizure of any box containing any document with any classification of any kind — and all boxes stored with that box; it allowed the seizure of any writing from Trump’s presidency.” 

Essentially, Garland authorized the FBI to seize virtually everything in sight! And Turley isn’t the only one deeply concerned by the overly-board search warrant. 

Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations, argue that the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was illegal and in violation of the Presidential Records Act, which logically assumes that a former president’s records will include classified information.

In related news, FBI whistleblowers are coming forward to expose corruption and cover-ups in multiple Bureau field offices around the country. Agents allege that they were pressured to sign false affidavits, ordered to inflate statistics around domestic terrorism cases and covered up “illicit sexual activities” of other FBI personnel.

I hope we are witnessing a turning point where good people inside the FBI are stepping up to protect the agency’s honor and reputation before it is utterly destroyed. But these additional allegations prove that concerns about corruption are valid, not just “crackpot conspiracies,” and that the corruption is likely far more extensive than realized.

After the Russia collusion hoax and a long list of other FBI’s failures, Director Wray and Attorney General Garland are going to have do a lot better than, “Trust us.”