Then on Sunday, several senior Republicans pioneered a new defense of the former president, questioning whether the Mar-a-Lago material was really highly sensitive, citing a president’s powers to declassify classified information.
Turner’s game continued to raise questions about whether the Justice Department overreached in the extraordinary move to obtain a search warrant to enter a former president’s property. But it was also just the latest attempt by the GOP to defend Trump, still an enormously powerful force in the party, as ignoring key issues including why a former president should keep highly sensitive documents.
The GOP’s new approach followed increasingly desperate and baseless claims by Trump, conservative lawmakers and media pundits that the FBI was nothing more than a weaponized political enforcement arm of President Joe Biden, who ‘office could have planted documents during the search to discredit Trump or all of them. what he had to do was ask for the recovery of the material. Each of these attacks seemed intended to distract Americans from further evidence of Trump’s aberrant behavior.
The Republican counterattack also ignores the fact that a federal judge had to agree there was probable cause that a crime had been committed before authorizing the warrant to search Trump’s home.
Previously sealed court documents released Friday indicated that prosecutors were investigating possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.
“I don’t understand what the purpose was”
In his appearance on CNN, Turner tried to straddle his responsibility to show his seriousness as one of the members of Congress charged with critical responsibilities in overseeing the intelligence community with imperatives politicians in the GOP to defend Trump.
He did not repeat the wild claims about the politicization of the FBI that were dismissed from the hip by Republicans who had little knowledge of the material in the Trump residence. But Turner also sought to increase the pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland, who vowed last week that the Justice Department would not be deterred from ensuring the rule of law applied to everyone, including former presidents.
“Attorney General Garland has to provide these materials … Let’s look at them,” Turner told CNN’s Brianna Keilar about the evidence the Justice Department used to justify a search of Trump’s home. “And then we can tell you what our response is and what our discernment is as to whether or not this is a true threat to national security or whether or not this is an abuse of discretion by Attorney General Garland “.
Turner questioned whether the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago were still actually classified, despite their descriptions in a receipt the FBI left for Trump that suggested they were.
“The receipt shows that this material was marked as such. It does not mean that it is currently marked as such,” Turner said.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota also suggested the Justice Department could clear up some questions about the search by releasing an affidavit used to justify the search, which remains sealed.
“I think it would be good for the Justice Department to release some of the information about the extraordinary steps or the steps that they took to try to cooperate with the former president,” Rounds said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“I also think this will bring into question a constitutional question that hasn’t been talked about, and that is whether a president can declassify or classify certain articles,” Rounds said.
Presidents have substantial powers to declassify information. But the former presidents do not. And so far there is no clear evidence of any process undertaken by Trump to officially declassify the documents while in office. And even if the material were declassified, possible lax storage arrangements at his residence could still have posed a threat to national security. Also, none of the three laws cited in the criminal order depend solely on whether the information is considered unclassified, which may make the declassification point somewhat irrelevant anyway.
It’s also unclear why a former president needed this information.
“What was the motivation to accumulate them, to move them to Mar-a-Lago?” James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, told CNN’s “Newsroom” on Saturday. “I don’t understand what the purpose was. I mean, you know, the imagination can run wild here as to the purpose or potential motivations.”
New potential legal exposure for Trump’s team
The question of why the Justice Department thought it was justified to send the FBI to Mar-a-Lago is perhaps the most important outstanding issue, and it could be clarified by new reports on Trump’s legal team.
Two sources familiar with the matter said one of Trump’s lawyers claimed in June that no more classified information was stored at the residence. The National Archives, which has responsibility for collecting and classifying presidential material, has previously said at least 15 boxes of records from the White House at Mar-a-Lago, including some that were classified, were recovered before the batch that retired last week.
The letter signed by the lawyer raised the question of how many people could be facing legal exposure if the information extracted from the complex last week was indeed classified. And it might help explain why obstruction of justice is one of the possible crimes listed in the search warrant.
“I don’t know if the person who sent that letter had any personal knowledge of what the actual scenario was,” said Carrie Cordero, a former Justice Department official who is now a national security and legal analyst for CNN.
“But I think it indicates that there are more people besides the former president who potentially have legal exposure here.”
The political impact of search is growing
A week after the FBI operation, the political repercussions are only growing. Republicans’ outburst of fury and wild claims that Biden was operating a police state reaffirmed that the horror of the U.S. Capitol uprising did nothing to slow Trump’s supporters, including some grassroots GOP leaders. The conservative backlash led to threats against the judge in the case and FBI agents, suggesting that violence still simmers beneath the surface of a country that is deeply and dangerously divided.
The past week has also showcased Trump’s trademark ability to trash institutions of government designed to bolster the rule of law and counter the power of presidents (and former presidents) who get angry about playing by the rules. His conduct is often so unfettered that attempts by powerhouses like the Justice Department to hold him accountable lead to treacherous political waters that prompt Trump to make wild claims of a conspiracy against him. This sense of victimization is one of the key ingredients of his dominance over the Republican Party and is sure to become central to his growing confrontation with the Justice Department.
And the events of the past week, and the willingness of much of the Republican Party to jump to Trump’s defense, even at the risk of inciting violence, have anticipated the national trauma that could ensue if Trump is accused in this investigation. or in other criminal investigations into their conduct. This includes several investigations related to his attempt to subvert the 2020 elections and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power based on his falsehoods about electoral fraud, which were rejected by several courts.
As the legal questions widen, the political impact of the search of Trump’s residence also deepens. In the immediate aftermath of what was an unprecedented move against a former president, Trump incited a backlash that overshadowed his likely 2024 presidential bid. And the wave of Republican outrage convinced potential rivals for the GOP nomination, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, to stand by him and criticize the FBI’s search.
Still, Trump’s return to the headlines has reminded many Americans of the angst and polarization that alienated the broader national electorate and cost him the 2020 election. The research also focused attention on the extraordinary grip of criminal, civil and congressional probes hanging over the former president’s head that would spell disaster for any normal political candidate.
The Trump controversy also had another political effect: It overshadowed Biden’s best week as president so far, which was capped by the passage of his landmark climate and health care package.
But Biden’s success won’t be judged just by last week. The real test of his momentum will come in the November midterm elections that Democrats have been dreading. But the juxtaposition between Biden’s progress, which has now given vulnerable Democrats more of a campaign this August recess, and Trump’s deepening legal troubles promise to become an early point of comparison in his potential comeback of the White House in 2024.
