What Merrick Garland is really doing to Donald Trump
The media is running rampant with speculation over the FBI search warrant and raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Is it purely related to the crime of taking classified documents or presidential records? Or do the records hold smoking gun evidence of crimes connected with the “Big Lie” and the January 6th insurrection? Is Trump the criminal target or merely in possession of evidence against another party? Will this lead to Trump’s indictment? To that of others?
In fact, we don’t know … yet. We do know it was the result of a criminal referral and that taking the dramatic step of secretly securing a warrant and conducting a barely-announced raid meant that authorities assumed Trump could not be trusted to “find” the documents or not to destroy them.
But there is a hidden benefit — intentional or not — that the media has skipped over. For months, conservative pundits have argued that bringing charges against a former president is so unusual, so out of step with America’s past, that it could do more harm than good. Obtaining this search warrant and conducting the raid blunts their desperate argument—the perfect baby step that begins to normalize the notion of putting a former president behind bars.
This is a canny move by Merrick Garland and the DOJ. Once the reality of this raid sinks in with the public—combined with the devastating evidence unearthed and broadcast by the House January 6th Committee—the actions that follow won’t seem all that jarring.
Search and seizure … subject … target … indictment … arrest … trial … conviction. Step by step, it’s a perfectly normal sequence—and the Mar-a-Lago raid has finally started us on this path.
Nelson Checkoway is an award-winning copywriter and the principal of Rising Tide Direct, a fundraising agency for non-profit organizations.