Very Brief: Trump's Good Week In Florida; Also In DC

In a sense we’ve already covered the Tim Thibault story in the comments. Thibault, of course, is the former FBI official (I believe he was most recently an ASAC in WFO) who seems to have been involved in multiple Deep State maneuvers—Crossfire Hurricane, the Hunter laptop, and now the MAL Raid. As a program manager in WFO his involvement in all those cases makes sense. Multiple commenters have suggested—plausibly, IMO—that, while Thibault is clearly a bad guy, at the same time he’s a fall guy for Wray and top people at DoJ. I find that plausible because I don’t accept that a mid level manager can call the shots on such ultra high profile cases without the involvement of higher ups—much higher ups. At the same time, it doesn’t seem entirely plausible that he would simply have been following orders from those higher ups. There’s more to learn here.

That’s Larry Johnson’s view, expressed in an appropriately minimalist post today:

THE START OF THE UNRAVELING OF THE TRUMP MAR A LAGO RAID

We surely don’t know everything, but just as surely we know there’s more there there. And that’s saying something, after all, because we’ve seen a lot already. The Big Mo seems to be shifting to Trump in a fairly public way, and it appears to be fed by FBI whistleblowers—like, a dozen or so, who have documentary materials to back up their assertions. We know by now that that doesn’t necessarily equate to prosecutions, much less convictions, but maybe we can settle for revelations, given that this is ultimately political.

Johnson offers support for the view that I’ve expressed repeatedly. There is now enough water over the dam, enough revelations, enough distance in time from the major excesses of the Deep State (Russia Hoax, J6, Covid Regime, etc.), and—just as important—enough evidence that the power institutions have lost most of their credibility. Judges read the news, too. They’re citizens, just like we are. Their institutional concerns are being trashed by these abuses, but their freedoms as citizens are also being compromised. I remain hopeful that, now that the case has moved past the joke magistrate stage, the judiciary will take a tough line.

Here’s how Johnson puts it. Note right up front that, like me and most other people, Johnson takes it as a given that Wray and Garland were thoroughly briefed on the MAL Raid. If they didn’t go over the PC with fine toothed combs for an op of this sort, they should be fired for incompetence:

It appears that Attorney General Garland and FBI Director Wray are using Thibault as the sacrificial lamb. They can feign outrage that this man lied to them about the predicate for going after the documents in Donald Trump’s residence. They will likely reveal that the raid was Thibault’s idea and he used a pliant FBI agent and a planted “source” to justify the action. Once a real judge gets a hold of these facts, Trump will have once again turned the tables on his persecutors.

This story is likely to get bigger and will implicate both the Clintons and the Obamas. Stay tuned.

Who knows? Perhaps it will also implicate figures in the GOP Establishment. After all, the movement to oust Trump has always been bi-partisan.

In the comments to the post Johnson makes several statements that, while they can’t be confirmed, are worth noting because of his connections:

I know from a source with direct access that the FBI is in a panic

One of the ironies here is that the judges in DC that could hear this have already ruled–i.e. making case law–on records related to Bill Clinton. That precedent serves Trump’s interests. Also, the judge in Florida hearing the Special Master request is honest.

The Clinton case Johnson is referring too—it involved presidential tape recordings in BC’s sock drawer—was, indeed, decided by a very liberal judge: None other than Amy Berman Jackson. You can read about it here:

Old case over audio tapes in Bill Clinton's sock drawer could impact Mar-a-Lago search dispute

Judge ruled in 2012 that a president's discretion to declare records "personal" is far-reaching and mostly unchallengeable.

The point is that the case was decided on very broad grounds, as you can see from the subheading. It’s very good for Trump.

We also saw yesterday, as part of Trump’s very good week, DoJ admitting that they had gathered privileged materials during the MAL Raid. What every judge will be thinking about is this: The agents were accompanied by DoJ lawyers who could review everything being seized in situ, and the search was conducted over something like 9 hours. There is no more excuse for seizing privileged documents than there was any excuse for seizing Trump’s passport. First impressions matter, and these first impressions are very bad.