Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Books are my comfort food!

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Trump Crime Cartel / One Person Could End the Speculation

One Person Could End the Speculation

by | 145 Comments

This post is in: 

No one (other than the FBI and the judge involved) knows what the search warrant yesterday is about, and the reason there is so much speculation is because with Trump, there was so much criminality that we know of and so much potential criminality.

There is one person who could settle all that. Trump. He could release the content of the search warrant right fucking now if he wanted to. The target of a warrant is not bound by any confidentiality. He could walk to any microphone in the western hemisphere and there would be dozens of reporters there eager to hear all about it and look at the warrant and broadcast it.

But he won’t. Because he’d rather people speculate and he would rather play the victim.

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    To be fair, most of the media would rather speculate too, so they’re not going to press him on it.

  2. 2.

    Frankensteinbeck

    If the story that he’s looking for a defense lawyer is true, then he thinks whatever is on that warrant is real and the FBI got the evidence they wanted in the raid.

    The only cloud to that silver lining is that Trump is phenomenally, mythic levels of stupid.  What he thinks he’s in danger of doesn’t necessarily correlate to reality.

  3. 3.

    JDM

    There’s also the fact that Trump probably hasn’t managed to work his way all the way through the warrant. He’s probably stuck on the first page and complaining about the lack of pictures.

  4. 4.

    sab

    I bet James Comey has the contacts to get to the bottom of this, since the current guys are stubbornly following the rules.

  5. 5.

    cain

    I’m actually waiting on him to declare war with the govt and get dark MAGA out so that hey can abscond to Hungary.

  7. 7.

    Grampa

    Not just the warrant. Presumably, there was an inventory of items taken, which should have been signed off on by T or his designee.

  8. 8.

    jonas

    @Frankensteinbeck:If the story that he’s looking for a defense lawyer is true

    Oh god. What utter assclown(s) is he going to get for that gig? Just the lawyer’s antics will be a story unto itself, aside from whatever Trump gets charged with.

  9. 9.

    MattF

    Also, delaying, obfuscating, and teasing things out until anyone listening is bored and confused is part of his playbook. That feeling you get of ‘I need to get out of here’ is part of his game.

  10. 10.

    Redshift

    I think it’s less that he wants people to speculate and more that he doesn’t want to burst the bubble of “it’s all an outrageous political witch hunt and there’s no good reason for it.” If the warrant could be spun to support that in any way, he’d release it in a hot minute.

  13. 13.

    Another Scott

    But, but, how can he demand/beg for donations for his PAC if he does that?? The Deep State doesn’t follow niceties like legal procedures and the law, you know…

    So I'm no federal prosecutor, but going right to "the FBI planted evidence!!!" within 24 hours of the search doesn't seem…great

    — Marc Channick (@Sorry_What_Now) August 9, 2022

    (via Popehat)

    I’m sure John Dillinger is involved somehow, he always is. fnord. [/ThreadDownstairs]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  14. 14.

    RSA

    @sab:  Alex Jones has a lawyer who might soon need work and obviously will work for anyone.

    …and who will immediately send Trump’s pee tape to the DOJ, accidentally.

  17. 17.

    Ken

    Isn’t the widespread speculation that the warrant was for classified documents just that — speculation? It really could be anything. Until we see the warrant, or learn more, we’re all free to assume the worst. Plutonium. The books for his human trafficking operation. A meth lab. The steamier love letters from Kim Jong-un, with pictures.

  18. 18.

    SpaceUnit

    Because this investigation likely involves classified documents (and could potentially affect national security) could the judge impose a sweeping gag order that forbids disclosing the details of the warrant?

    Any lawyers in the crowd?

  21. 21.

    MazeDancer

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Definitely, lawyer needs up front payment.

    Also, expect to be fired.

    Trump is also well-known for both not following counsel and telling counsel what to do.

  22. 22.

    Spanky

    @jonas:

    Oh god. What utter assclown(s) is he going to get for that gig?

    Rudy suddenly felt a great disturbance in the Force, like a great moron crying out for representation.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    If Trump were to be indicted, I expected he would be given the opportunity to turn himself in.  I was never contemplating a raid.  So this is like Christmas in August.

  25. 25.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Redshift:

    Yup, is there any iota of a way to make him look good he’d be on it like a rat, umm, like a rat… umm.. like that.

  26. 26.

    gene108

    I wasted time on Twitter (redundant, I know) and so many high ranking Republicans were outraged by this “unprecedented” search of a former President’s home by his successor.

    They vowed revenge on Joe and Hunter Biden, Merrick Garland, and so many others.

    They vowed to purge the FBI of anyone involved with this.

    They made threatening implications about, if “the FBI can get a search the home of the former President, imagine what else they can do to you”, like the FBI couldn’t get a warrant to search my home, if they really wanted to.

    But none of them ever said they think Trump’s innocent. They never said, in all their stand with Trump rhetoric, that they believe TFG will be exonerated.

    The cold sweat coming from Republicans that their messiah might be held accountable for the first time in his life amuses me.

    Edit: changed formatting

  29. 29.

    Fair Economist

    Oh no, it’s not that Trump wants speculation. It’s that the named crimes are very serious – probably selling secrets – and he doesn’t want the public to be forced to acknowledge how much of a traitor he is.

  30. 30.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mueller, She Wrote. @MuellerSheWrote 14m

    BREAKING: the DoJ has executed a search WARRANT on REPUBLICAN MEMBER OF CONGRESS SCOTT PERRY, confiscating his phone. Perry asked for a pardon for 1/6 and MEADOWS was seen burning documents after meeting with PERRY.

  31. 31.

    Baud

    As long as we’re engaging in baseless speculation, how sweet would it be if Ivanka was the informant?

  32. 32.

    JPL

    @gene108: They need the crazies to vote.   It’s all they got.

     

    OT  talking about crazies…   The Republicans against Trump pac have a hard hitting but true ad about Walker wanting to shoot the brains out of his ex-wife.   I just saw it on air, and it was followed by a Herschel Walker ad, that starts with a scene from his football days, and then he states I’m hard hitting.

    He might want to pull that ad, just sayin.

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: So, … Tuesday??

    “Sure I burned those documents.  That’s why there are so many fireplaces in the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building – to burn documents.  Everyone knows that, you silly.”

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    gene108

    @JPL:

    They need the crazies to vote. It’s all they got.

    I know. I still find it amusing.

    IIRC, Democrats weren’t at all panicked when the FBI was going over “but her emails” in 2016 about the likelihood of wrong doing.

    I feel like this says something about both parties. I’m not quite sure how to put it.

  43. 43.

    CaseyL

    I agree that the reason Trump hasn’t released the warrant is because he doesn’t want to publicize the evidence that DoJ now has.  Which means the evidence is incredibly damning – not enough to break through to the True Believers, but possibly to the MSM (other than Fox).

    With Scott Perry’s phone now also confiscated, anyone who was in on the coup must be shitting bricks, wondering when their time is coming.

    @zhena gogolia: The speculation on Twitter is that Meadows has turned and is singing like a bird.  (Which would explain why Justice decided not to charge him with contempt, back when the J6 Committee requested it.)

  44. 44.

    zhena gogolia

    @gene108: Did any of us for one second think that Hillary might be betraying her country? No.

    Do they think/know TFG is? Of course.

  45. 45.

    Spanky

    I get the definite sense that DOJ is playing chess, having thought through many moves ahead. And all the Trumpists can do now is react. (Standard RICO procedures, no doubt.)

     

    Moar popcorn  Alexa!

  46. 46.

    Josie

    @zhena gogolia: Yes. Why else would Russia be so upset about the search at MAL? They probably know what the object of the search is and are worried about being outed.

  50. 50.

    CaseyL

    @Spanky: Gods, I hope so!

    I wonder if/when someone is going to make a break for it, hightail off to a country the US doesn’t have an extradition treaty with. Or get stopped at an airport trying!

  51. 51.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Even the Brits are laughing at him

    Notorious mob boss Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion. Not sure what’s brought that to mind today.

    — Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 9, 2022

    Well, Larry knows a dirty rat when he sees one​

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: ​
      I think it’s Eric. He is going to grass them all up and skate. I have no basis for this except that it would be funny.

  55. 55.

    Roger Moore

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    If the story that he’s looking for a defense lawyer is true, then he thinks whatever is on that warrant is real and the FBI got the evidence they wanted in the raid.

    Putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment, that isn’t necessarily true.  If you assume the whole thing was made up as an excuse to harass Trump, you could easily believe they’ll charge him with some made-up crime.  Of course, if you assume the courts are completely corrupt, you have to question why you’d bother with a good attorney, since the outcome is foreordained anyway.  But if you’re a conspiracy theorist, that last point is easy to ignore.

  58. 58.

    Mike in NC

    Returned from an errand today and spotted a “Trump 2024” yard sign outside a house in our development. No idea who lives there but I can likely look it up on the HOA website and taunt the proud idiot(s).

  59. 59.

    Immanentize

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Just my take —

    Scott Perry was one of those seeking a pardon from Trump at the end. It seems he is deeply involved, from reports, in the fake elector scheme.

    This feels like a (mob or drug) conspiracy wrap up to me. Once the boss is in the sights, every rat runs for cover. I guarantee that for every Perry who had shit seized, there are at least 5-10 others who did so too, but are smart enough to keep their fucking mouths shut.

    I want to thank Alex Jones’ attorney personally, but I don’t know where to find him. Probably debriefing with the G-men.

    ETA in case I wasn’t clear: this was not about top secret documents taken by Trump, this is about the fake elector prosecutions. But if the find evidence of other wrong doing? Who’s to say?

  62. 62.

    Roger Moore

    @SpaceUnit:

    Because this investigation likely involves classified documents (and could potentially affect national security) could the judge impose a sweeping gag order that forbids disclosing the details of the warrant?

    And we all know the great respect Trump pays to the pronouncements of the courts when they tell him not to do stuff. /s

  64. 64.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    You know how much evidence it takes to sign off on a no-knock raid at the home of a former President?

    — Angry Staffer 🌻 (@Angry_Staffer) August 8, 2022

  66. 66.

    Immanentize

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: No, because they remain secret or at least sealed until formal legal proceedings (read indictment) begin. But Trump can release it as the object at any moment if he wanted to clear things up

  71. 71.

    Ken

    @Roger Moore: you have to question why you’d bother with a good attorney, since the outcome is foreordained anyway.  But if you’re a conspiracy theorist, that last point is easy to ignore.

    If you’re a proper conspiracy theorist, everything is evidence for the theory. Thus: If the charges were legitimate, Trump could get off if he hired a good attorney. So when he hires some idiot, it means the charges aren’t legitimate. QED checkmate libtard et cetera.

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:

    Would he be a reliable witness?

    The real question is what documentary evidence he could produce.  People lie all the time, but contemporaneous documents are much less likely to.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    @Spanky: PBS/British murder mystery shows have taught me that it’s always the quiet one.

    Does anyone even know what Eric’s voice sounds like??  (No, I’m not getting out of the boat to find a clip.  You go ahead.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  80. 80.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: It was reported as “no announce” which means in vernacular, “no knock.” You only get those if there is serious chance of violence or evidence destruction. Also, the SS was notified before (how much who knows) that it was going down.

  81. 81.

    Ken

    @different-church-lady: If you gloat that fella will probably feel forced to vote for Trump!

    If DeSantis (or anyone but Trump for that matter) is the nominee, we should do all we can to encourage Republicans to write-in Trump.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … RollCall:

    The Department of Homeland Security announced late Monday it will begin phasing out a Trump-era program that requires some asylum-seekers to spend months in Mexico, after a Texas federal judge dissolved his earlier order that required the program’s revival.

    The department said in a news release that it is “committed to ending the court-ordered implementation” of the immigration program, known informally as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, “in a quick, and orderly, manner.”

    The move follows the Supreme Court decision in June that the government is not legally required to implement the program.

    The former administration’s policy, initially terminated by the Biden administration but revived late last year under court order, requires some migrants to wait in Mexico for the duration of their U.S. immigration court proceedings, which can last months or even more than a year.

    As part of the department’s effort to end the revived program, migrants claiming asylum will no longer be newly enrolled in Remain in Mexico. Additionally, migrants already waiting in Mexico under the program will be “disenrolled” at their next immigration court hearing date and allowed to continue their cases from within the U.S., according to DHS.

    The department’s news release added that it “will provide additional information in the coming days.”

    […]

    It’s almost like this Biden guy knows how to work the system to get his policies in place. Huh. Whodathunkit??

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  92. 92.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     For the first time in its 246-year history, the Marine Corps has named its first ever Black four-star general. Gen. Michael Langley.

    Biden running up the score

  95. 95.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MazeDancer:

    Trump is also well-known for both not following counsel and telling counsel what to do.

    At one point, his lawyers wouldn’t meet with him individually. He was such a liar that they always sent another person in to witness whatever TFG said.

  96. 96.

    lee

    Have not read thru the other comment sections, to see if anyone has mentioned this.

    Andrew Yang has tweeted about the search warrant and has come down on the same side as Trump.

    I’m sure none of us here finds that surprising.

    Apparently laws are for little people.

  97. 97.

    different-church-lady

    OT: Whoo hoo, just opened a letter from the IRS saying they found a $200 error in my favor!

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @Ken: Or encourage them to just stay home. Disaffected trumpers sitting out the Georgia Senate runoffs are probably what put Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the Senate. There is always a dropoff in voting between a general election and the runoff. Usually this favors Republicans in Georgia, but that time the Democrats’ dropoff was less than half of the Republicans’

    I think this was why Georgia Republicans did not resist Trump more forcefully when he foisted Herschel Walker on them. They were afraid he’d sandbag them again this fall.

  104. 104.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    FWIW, I doubt the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to confirm Trump was careless about or even lying about possession of some random classified documents. The content of these classified documents presumably matters. And why Trump was concealing them, if he was.

    — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 9, 2022

    Could be documents related to the 1/6 coup

  107. 107.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Roger Moore: ​

    If you assume the whole thing was made up as an excuse to harass Trump, you could easily believe they’ll charge him with some made-up crime.

    But this is about what Trump believes, not what his fans believe. And Trump has been under investigation for quite some time, and not been paranoid enough to take this step. He thinks he’s been caught. Again, he’s a truly monumentally stupid motherfucker, so he could be wrong. But he thinks this raid changed things and he’s going to face charges.

  108. 108.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Is any Trump supporter actually claiming Trump is unlikely to have broken the law?It all seems to be Trump is above the law, not Trump is innocent under the law.

    — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 9, 2022

    Bill makes a good point: not one republican is saying he’s innocent

  109. 109.

    different-church-lady

    Welp, might as well give up on the idea of getting anything at all done this week…

  112. 112.

    artem1s

    he would rather play the victim.

    mmmm, no. he’s a narcissist. the content of that warrant has something in it, that if revealed, would be a searing blow to his ego. may be as simple as being an official document that verifies he is not the President. or something personally embarrassing. even if the contents are leaked by someone else, he can always claim it’s fake news or has been altered. If he thought the content was benign, he’d already be grifting off it

  113. 113.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: ​

    not one republican is saying he’s innocent

    I think most of them don’t grasp the concept. Republicans are super tribal. Law enforcement exists to punish your enemies. Some of them have an extra ‘everyone is guilty of something’ belief, but it’s like all the ‘lock her up’ chanting. Their enemies are guilty and they are innocent, by definition. Even the ones who can grasp the difference will be slow to think it’s worth mentioning.

  115. 115.

    dm

    @lee: No, that’s not what Andrew Yang said, but I suppose you can be forgiven for interpreting it that way.

    What he said was a muddle, amounting to: “This is just going to feed the paranoids”.

    Which is true, but… the paranoids are going to conjure all the nutrition they need.  We shouldn’t let that stop us from doing what’s right.

    Preet and Joyce Vance on their podcast are celebrating a big news event that happens before they record.  They’re coming down on: the government wants its documents back, they’ve been negotiating for 18 months.  As to why now: the meetings with the lawyers we heard about last week may have broken down.

    I wonder if a Secret Service agent in Trump’s company noticed classified documents after hearing that “all the documents have been returned”, and mentioned it to the Justice Department (maybe while talking about what happened to the Jan. 6 texts on his phone?).

  116. 116.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Because he’d rather people speculate and he would rather play the victim.

    And make bank on it.

  117. 117.

    danielx

    @Spanky: ​
     Somehow I don’t think chess is Trump’s game. Three moves in he’d knock over the board and throw the pieces – “I win!”

  119. 119.

    different-church-lady

    @dm: This line that goes “You can’t prosecute Trump because that’s gonna make his voters vote for him even harder” is confounding me.

  122. 122.

    Another Scott

    Axios from about an hour ago:

    What she’s saying: Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Trump who has hosted shows for the far-right network One America News Network (OAN), said in a podcast interview Tuesday that she arrived on the scene after the FBI began the search and alleged that law enforcement personnel initially refused to show her the search warrant.

    * The warrant, which they shared after the search, showed agents were investigating possible violations of laws regarding the handling of classified material as well as the Presidential Records Act, Bobb said.

    * The search spanned roughly 10 hours, she added.

    * Trump’s legal team had engaged in discussions with the Department of Justice earlier this spring, Bobb said in a separate interview with the Post. At the time, his lawyers turned over several documents that could be considered presidential records after searching two to three dozen boxes of materials, she noted.

    * At another meeting in June, federal officials examined the material brought by Trump’s legal team, Bobb said.

    TimesofSanDiego (from March):

    A reporter for San Diego’s One America News Network is among six people subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    Letter to Christina Bobb of OAN (PDF)

    The panel said Tuesday it had issued subpoenas to OAN’s Christina Bobb and five others who promoted false claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and took part in, or encouraged, actions based on those false claims.

    The letter demands Washington-based Bobb, 39, produce documents by March 15 and sit for a deposition March 23.

    “The Select Committee’s investigation has revealed credible evidence that you publicly promoted claims that the November 2020 election was stolen and participated in attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of the election results based on those claims,” the letter said.

    […]

    I assume she sat for the deposition, but I haven’t checked.

    RawStory:

    Christina Bobb, an attorney for President Donald Trump, objected to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago because she said her client is “extremely cooperative.”

    In an interview on Real America’s Voice, Bobb said that she was at Trump’s Florida home during the Monday raid but “was not allowed to observe.”

    “I was his legal representation, his counsel on the ground there,” she said. “They kept me out of everything, all the facilities. They say that’s standard protocol. I could not see. I could not observe.”

    “I thought it was particularly alarming because we had been very cooperative,” the attorney continued. “This is a Washington, D.C. case coming out of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice. We’ve been extremely cooperative.”

    Real America’s Voice host Karyn Turk wondered if the FBI had “planted” evidence.

    “Nobody observed it,” Bobb confirmed. “No, there wasn’t. To your point, this was a completely unnecessary power flex. It was a weird flex. It’s quite honestly sad to see what they have done to our country.”

    “No, there is no security that something wasn’t planted,” she added. “I’m not saying that’s what they did.”

    […]

    “I’m not saying they’re child-eating lizard people, but I wasn’t there to see if they aren’t…”

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  124. 124.

    Fester Addams

    Russia, if you’re listening — I hope you are able to find the missing warrant…

  128. 128.

    Ken

    @danielx: Have you played “Trump: The Game”? It’s sort of like Monopoly; players buy various properties and whoever ends up with the most money wins, which is reasonable.

    The rule which makes no sense is that when you land on someone else’s property and have to pay them rent, you take the money out of the bank and give it to them. You don’t have to pay it back. I can’t help but think this explains a lot about Trump and his bankruptcies.

  129. 129.

    dm

    @different-church-lady: we’re talking about people who believe the election was stolen. What’s confounding?

    But Yang keeps beating that drum.

    Preet & Joyce Vance also mentioned that we’re 90 days out from the mid-terms, and the Justice Dept likes to avoid actions that might impact the election starting real soon. Another reason for moving now — especially if there’s a danger that Top Secret materials might be disclosed — can’t wait until November to protect those.

     

    They’re also concerned about the potential political impact, but are confident there was great urgency to act.

    Appropriately, the White House learned about this raid from Twitter.

  130. 130.

    Scout211

    @Another Scott: Thanks for posting this. I deleted my attempt to post the information about her upthread because I couldn’t find a more credible link than an OAN interview with her. Plus, I got some of the information wrong about her spouse.  (Bobb/Bopp, so confusing)

    My question has been why aren’t the mainstream media reporters all over her asking for interviews. She was there. But maybe now they will be booking her? She loves to talk, apparently.

  131. 131.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Another Scott:

    Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Trump who has hosted shows for the far-right network One America News Network (OAN)

    Oh, well, that’s a trustworthy source who definitely wouldn’t lie about anything or everything.  We can completely rule out that her entire story is fictitious from top to bottom.

  132. 132.

    lee

    @dm: That’s what his second tweet said. He had one (which has been deleted) was decidedly different.​
     

    Also if you go back thru, he has even more tweets that try to claim that the search warrant was not really warranted.

  133. 133.

    Ken

    @Scout211: She loves to talk, apparently.

    Certainly the main quality I look for in a lawyer is their willingness to discuss my private legal affairs on national television.

  134. 134.

    HumboldtBlue

    Someone at National Review is making actual sense.

    Kevin Williamson:

    The FBI’s serving a search warrant on Donald Trump’s residence is not — in spite of everything being said about it — unprecedented. The FBI serves search warrants on homes all the time. Donald Trump is a former president, not a mystical sacrosanct being.

    If we really believe, as we say we believe, that this is a republic, that nobody is above the law, that the presidency is just a temporary executive-branch office rather than a quasi-royal entitlement, then there is nothing all that remarkable about the FBI serving a warrant on a house in Florida. I myself do not find it especially difficult to believe that there exists reasonable cause for such a warrant. And if the feds have got it wrong, that wouldn’t be the first time. Those so-called conservatives who are publicly fantasizing about an FBI purge under the next Republican administration are engaged in a particularly stupid form of irresponsibility.

    There are no fewer than five different congressional committees with FBI oversight powers. I’m not especially inclined to take federal agencies and their officers at their word in almost any circumstance, and so active and vigorous oversight seems to me appropriate here, as in most other cases. But if it turns out, in the least surprising political development of the decade, that Donald Trump is a criminal, then he should be treated like any other criminal.

    If that did indeed establish a precedent, it would be a good precedent.

  135. 135.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I shouldn’t even hope. I’ve been burned so many times…

    Patrick @QuadCityPat. 34m
    Meadows flipped.

    Tristan Snell @TristanSnell
    Trump’s lawyers told him to cut off all contact with Mark Meadows — and two days later the FBI shows up at Mar-a-Lago.
    Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe not.

  136. 136.

    oatler

    This afternoon my bus driver was listening to hate-radio and the talk was all about This Means War. The Qanon Ricochet site is full of pants-loaded terror and, of course, Civil War.

  137. 137.

    Feathers

    Dark Melania?

    When I first saw the Dark Brandon meme I laughed my ass off, thinking of the Jungian shadow self. As one does. Jung held that everyone has a shadow side that they deny. We normally think of a good person having a dark side, but an evil person’s shadow self would be good.

    So the right wing created Brandon, an evil twin of Biden (a good guy), however Brandon has morphed into Dark Brandon, who is a super double good Biden with extra super powers. Too wonderful.

    But yeah, Dark Melania is just a dream. Hope Baron is doing OK, but it’s sort of a hope against hope.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s probably too soon for DOJ to have looked at Alex Jones’s phone, but that’s just another weird timeline thing. We’ll find out eventually, it’s just so odd for nobody to know what’s actually going on. Except Trump.

  138. 138.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @oatler:

    and, of course, Civil War.

    This is why it’s hard to predict and prosecute shit like Jan 6, because conservatives are such frenzied, elaborate violence fantasists.  Every single time they lose, they start screeching about how they have all the guns and it’s time for Civil War.  Strangely, they all seem to wait for someone else to fight it for them.

  142. 142.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raoul Paste: I’m not counting any chickens, and I’ve always thought MM was a true believer as opposed to most of trump’s cabinet who saw him as a useful idiot,  but I imagine the prospect of massive legal bills plus the possibility of jail would be clarifying

  143. 143.

    dm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Meadows thinks he has a chance at the Presidency.  He’s not particularly good at reading the room.

     

    What ever happened to that hyper-secret server in the White House basement where the readout of Trump’s “perfect” call with Zelinsky was supposedly stored?

    I suppose it’s only natural that we wouldn’t hear about the fate of a code-word only server in a SCIF, but I’ve been wondering….

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