Matt Gertz at MMFA:
The promise of President Donald Trumpâs second term, according to his MAGA media allies, was that Trump loyalists installed at the heads of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies would finally reveal the âdeep stateâ corruption behind the myriad investigations into his misdeeds and bring his political enemies to justice. While the administrationâs actual document releases have proven little, its strategy of chumming the water with red meat for the MAGA base has worked on the Trumpist propaganda corps, which has taken the bait and used it to demand a wave of arrests and prosecutions. In the latest such salvo, Fox News Digital reported Tuesday morning that âthe FBI did not believe it had probable cause to raid President Donald Trumpâs Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, but moved forward amid pressure from the Biden Justice Department,â citing ânewly declassified documentsâ to which the outlet apparently received exclusive access. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and FBI Director Kash Patel quickly promoted Foxâs story; so did Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who said he had received the âshocking new docsâ that day and alleged they proved that the FBIâs search of the presidentâs home had been a âmiscarriage of justice.â But as legal reporters who had followed the Trump documents case swiftly noted, the GOPâs spin was nonsense.Â
The FBI agentsâ worries about probable cause, documented in the emails Fox News Digital reviewed, predated the acquisition of Mar-a-Lago surveillance video showing âTrump aides secretly removing boxes of records,â which convinced the bureauâs leaders that probable cause had been reached.Â
Even Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon rejected the Trump legal teamâs argument that âthe dissenting viewsâ by FBI agents would have âaltered the evidentiary calculus in support of probable cause.â
And concerns aside, a magistrate judge signed off on the search warrant â and when FBI agents executed it, they found reams of unsecured classified material in various rooms of Trumpâs home/private club.
The rightâs propaganda apparatus nonetheless sprang into action.Â
[...] Weâve been seeing iterations of this pattern throughout this first year of Trumpâs second term: The Trump administration chums the waters by handing over documents related to one of the myriad past investigations into the presidentâs actions; the president, top Trump officials, and Republican officeholders say they show a massive scandal; and mainstream reporters point out their narrative is farcical while MAGA media stars call for the indictment, arrest, prosecution, jailing, and perhaps execution of their political enemies.
[...] But one canât put anything past an authoritarian president who has installed loyalists who treat the Justice Department as his personal law firm, purged the law enforcement apparatus of anyone who thinks otherwise, and frequently demands probes into his political foes that his underlings scuttle to carry out. The constant right-wing celebrations for Trumpâs revenge tour can only increase the pressure on law enforcement to try to somehow bring cases against his foes. Indeed, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a grand jury probe into Gabbardâs nonsensical accusations in August; three months later, Reuters reported that prosecutors were drafting grand jury subpoenas âto investigate Obama-era intelligence officials.â
The MAGA media apparatus and GOP electeds are pushing for indictment, arrest, prosecution, jailing, and perhaps execution of their political enemies on specious grounds.
