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      Election lies pose physical threat to US poll workers, House report warns

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      Election lies pose physical threat to US poll workers, House report warnsOversight committee details chilling threats against election officials and says continued misinformation threatens democracy A sweeping US House oversight committee report has warned that lies and misinformation around the 2020 American presidential election present an “ongoing threat to representative democracy” and pose a grave physical danger to election officials.DoJ has asked court to unseal Trump search warrant, Merrick Garland saysRead moreThe 21-page report called for emergency funding to address increased security costs related to 2022 contests and warned that there was a much-heightened risk that conspiracy theorists could gain power over elections in the future.The report also detailed chilling threats against election administrators across the country. One Texas official received menacing messages targeting him and “threatening his children, saying, ‘I think we should end your bloodline.’” The messages against him came following “personal attacks on national media outlets”.Another threat included a social media call to “hang him when convicted for fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out of his mouth”.The committee started investigating the impact of lies surrounding election administration in early 2021. After former Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he falsely insisted that the election was stolen from him.While there is no evidence that the 2020 election had irregularities, let alone widespread fraud, many Trump supporters still believe in the “big lie”. This falsehood energized a mob of Trump supporters to attack the US Capitol during the January 6 2020 insurrection.The House committee said that conspiracy theorists, “led by former President Donald Trump and his supporters”, have fueled threats against election officials. Several in Florida publicized an election supervisor’s phone number and encouraged listeners to call and say “that they are watching him, that he is a piece of crap, and that these are their elections”.The committee’s analysis described lies about elections as operating as a positive feedback mechanism. The report said: “The spread of false information about elections harms nearly every element of election administration.”“For the past two years, election misinformation in the United States has often followed a feedback loop that produces more false information, heightens threats and pressures on election administrators, and increases the possibility of election subversion,” the report said.“Conspiracy theorist candidates across the country have gained notoriety and run for office with the explicit goal of overturning election results,” it added.The report said that the spread of misinformation has exerted enormous pressure on election officials, who are swarmed with “coordinated campaigns of records requests and bad faith inquiries” to interfere with their work.Meanwhile, lawmakers in some states seized on the chaos to greenlight laws that make illegal minor mistakes by election officials, which “allow partisan actors to intervene in ballot counting and certification”.These statutes, along with the confusion and distrust that has grown since 2020, “have paved multiple pathways for the future subversion of legitimate election results,” the report said.TopicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      The Israeli Bet on Audiovisual Culture as Soft Power

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      When it comes to the midterms, things are starting to tilt in the Democrats’ favor | Robert Reich

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      When it comes to the midterms, things are starting to tilt in the Democrats’ favorRobert ReichPressure is mounting on Republican candidates, while Democrats finally appear to be hitting their stride Republican candidates for Senate, House and governorships in the upcoming midterms have been filling the airwaves with baseless assertions that the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago reveals the politicization of the justice department and undermines the rule of law.After the fall of Roe, Republican pursuit of abortion bans appears to falterRead moreRepublicans ranging from third-ranking House Republican Elise Stefanik to House minority leader Kevin McCarthy are brimming with outrage and accusation.Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to “defund the FBI!” Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed House candidate in Washington state, declares: “We’re at war.”As usual, Trump is fanning the flames, howling Monday that his “beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”That evening, the RNC sent out a fundraising text: “THIS IS NOT A DRILL: UNPRECEDENTED move Biden’s FBI RAIDS Pres. Trump’s home. Time to take back Congress.”Rubbish. There’s no evidence that the FBI search was motivated by anything other than suspicions (underscored by a federal judge’s finding of probable cause) that Trump made off with documents rightfully belonging to the United States.That’s a criminal offense. If anyone has been undermining the rule of law, it’s Trump.Recall that Trump himself appointed the current director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, after firing former director James Comey for investigating the ties of Trump’s 2016 campaign to Russia.But any allegation of Trump wrongdoing is automatically treated by Trump’s base as a loyalty test – triggering demands that Republican lawmakers and Republican hopefuls vigorously defend Trump and attack Democrats for going after him.This doesn’t pose a problem for Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterm elections, whom Trump Republicans won’t vote for anyway.But it is posing a large and growing problem for Republican candidates.As Biden and the Democrats take victory laps for legislation they’ve been passing – the Chips and Science Act, which President Biden Wednesday signed into law, and, very soon, the Inflation Reduction Act – the Republican party continues to wallow in Trumpist grievance and accusation.Typically, after primary contests, Republican candidates try to move as far from the extreme right as they dare, to pick up more moderate and independent voters for the general elections.Most Republican candidates know that their best chance of prevailing in November depends on distancing themselves from Trump and focusing on Republican hot-button issues like inflation, crime and immigration.But the Trump base’s response to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search shows how difficult it will be to gain any distance from Trump at all.That search is likely to be a prelude to more fireworks in September and October, when Republican candidates will have no choice but to repeatedly go to the mat for Trump.Consider:The January 6 committee will resume its hearings in early September. Those hearings will almost certainly provide more evidence of Trump’s attempted coup of 2020.The DoJ investigation into Trump’s role in pushing fake electors and in removing documents from the White House appears to be heating up.The DC court of appeals has just cleared the way for the House ways and means committee to obtain Trump’s long-hidden tax returns.Prosecutors in Georgia continue their investigation into Trump’s demand that Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger “find” the votes Trump needed to win an election that three separate courts confirmed he lost. Rudy Giuliani has just been ordered to testify before the grand jury in that case.Oh, and Trump himself will probably declare his candidacy for president in September or October.All of which will put Republican candidates under growing pressure from Trump’s base to defend Trump, to rage against his accusers, and to re-litigate the 2020 election – tasks that will be increasingly difficult as further evidence emerges of Trump’s criminality.Meanwhile, Democrats will be able to boast about what they’ve done for the American people: reduce drug prices, cut the costs of healthcare, clean the environment, maintain America’s competitive edge, and modernize the nation’s roads, bridges, and water and sewage systems.As Biden put it Tuesday when he signed into law the Chips and Science Act, America has met the moment: “a moment when we bet on ourselves, believed in ourselves and recaptured the story, the spirit and the soul of this nation.”Which will be the more attractive message to the moderate and independent voters who will largely determine the outcome of the midterms: defending Trump from mounting accusations of his criminality and his ever more outlandish claims of being persecuted, or “recapturing the can-do spirit” of America?I’m betting on the latter.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      Trump declines to answer questions in New York business investigation

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      Trump declines to answer questions in New York business investigationEx-president pleads the fifth two days after the FBI raided his Florida home, seeking classified documents Donald Trump declined to answer questions under oath on Wednesday in New York state’s civil investigation into his business dealings, pleading the fifth two days after the FBI raided his Florida home in a criminal case, seeking classified documents taken from the White House.The former US president’s decision to exercise his fifth amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination was delivered during a closed-door deposition in Manhattan, where the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, is examining the Trump family real estate empire.“I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States constitution,” Trump said in a statement as he prepared to appear before James.Trump’s deposition, which took place in lower Manhattan, appears to have lasted several hours. The former president departed 28 Liberty Street at 3.20pm in a black Secret Service SUV and peered out of the rear window as his motorcade crawled out of an underground garage and drove past onlookers.After Trump’s deposition concluded, one of Trump’s lawyers, Ronald Fischetti, confirmed that over the course of four hours, including several breaks, the former president had answered just one question – to state his name – and offered a statement calling the inquiry “the greatest witch hunt in the history of country”.According to the New York Times, Trump accused the attorney general of having “openly campaigned on a policy of destroying me”.Beyond that, from 9.30am to around 3pm, Trump had repeated the words “same answer” to every question about “valuations and golf clubs and all that stuff”, Fischetti told the Times.The attorney added that Trump’s decision to take the fifth had been made shortly before the interview started. “He absolutely wanted to testify and it took some very strong persuasion by me and some others to convince him,” Fischetti added.The high-stakes legal meeting came as pressure from senior Republicans mounted on the US Department of Justice, in the entirely separate case, to reveal details of the federal search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club in exclusive Palm Beach on Monday.The FBI search, the Guardian has reported, was authorized to seek presidential and classified records that the justice department believes the one-term former Republican president unlawfully retained after his time in the White House was up.However news of the search triggered outrage from Republican leaders, demanding that Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, swiftly explain the department’s actions. On Tuesday, Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, expressed “deep concern”, adding on Twitter: “No former president of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history.”Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell called for a “thorough and immediate explanation”.“Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately,” McConnell said in a statement.Meanwhile, the Palm Beach county state attorney, Dave Aronberg, a Democrat, rejected the characterization of the search as a “raid”, telling MSNBC​ that was “a gross exaggeration”.“This was a very orderly, smooth search of a home conducted by plain clothes FBI agents, escorted by Secret Service agents,​” Aronberg said.​FBI searched Trump’s home seeking classified presidential records – sourcesRead moreTrump’s lawyers have a copy of the warrant issued for the search and a list of what the FBI seized, Politico reported.Back in New York, before Trump’s deposition session on Wednesday, he slammed the legal encounter in a brash post on his Truth Social social media platform, his alternative after he was banned from Twitter.“In New York City tonight. Seeing racist NYS Attorney General tomorrow, for a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in US history!” Trump wrote, repeating an insult he has repeatedly thrown at James, who is Black and the first woman of color ever to hold statewide elected office in New York.“My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides,” Trump also posted, adding: “Banana Republic!”The case involves allegations that Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, misstated the value of assets including some of his golf courses and skyscrapers, misleading lenders and tax authorities.At the heart of the case are claims that Trump has for decades falsely inflated his fortune – a dance that involves publicity, maximizing access to bank loans and minimizing tax obligations. “I look better if I’m worth $10bn than if I’m worth $4bn,” he once said. In his book, The Art of the Deal, he chose to describe his business style as “truthful hyperbole”.In May, James’s office said that the investigation was nearing its conclusion and that investigators had amassed substantial evidence that could support legal action, such as a lawsuit, against Trump, his company or both. The attorney general’s office said Trump’s deposition was one of the few remaining pieces to be collected.Two of Trump’s adult children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, are believed to have testified in the investigation in recent days. Trump’s testimony was initially scheduled for last month but was delayed after the 14 July death of his ex-wife, Ivana Trump.Trump has denied the allegations, explaining that seeking the best valuations is a common practice in the real estate industry. While James has explored suing Trump or his company, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has been pursuing a parallel, criminal, investigation. However, it ran into problems after a new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, raised questions internally about the viability of the case, and its lead prosecutors resigned.Bragg has said the investigation is continuing.Commenting further on his refusal to answer questions on Wednesday, Trump’s statement continued: “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question … When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded politically motivated witch hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the fake news media, you have no choice.”As vociferous as Trump has been in defending himself in written statements and on stage at political rallies, legal experts said answering questions in a deposition was risky because anything he said could be used against him in Bragg’s investigation.The fifth amendment protects people from being compelled to be a witness against themselves in a criminal case.When the state investigation wraps up, James could seek financial penalties against Trump or his company, or even a ban on their involvement in certain types of businesses – as happened in a previous legal clash with James when, in 2019, the-then president was fined $2m for misuse of charitable assets and barred from running a charity in the future.The Associated Press contributed reporting
      This article was amended on 10 August 2022. An earlier version stated that Donald Trump gave onlookers a thumbs-up after his deposition; it was before the deposition.
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      Even the BBC Now Offers US-friendly Propaganda on Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Melodrama

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      While Biden is tackling inflation and shaping a green economy for the US, Britain is being left behind | Carys Roberts

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      While Biden is tackling inflation and shaping a green economy for the US, Britain is being left behindCarys RobertsThe Inflation Reduction Act is a big win for jobs and the environment, but Truss and Sunak have nothing similar to offer Over the weekend, US Democrats overcame months of political struggle to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in the Senate, marking a major victory for the president, Joe Biden, and for “Bidenomics” before the US midterms.The bill makes the single largest climate investment in US history, with $369bn for climate and clean energy. It is expected to enable the US to get two-thirds of the way towards its Paris agreement commitments while reducing energy costs. It lowers health costs for millions of Americans. It seeks to tackle inflation by directly reducing costs for individuals and by reducing the deficit through closing tax loopholes and increasing tax on corporates and the wealthy.The act is far from perfect. It is the diminished descendant of the failed Build Back Better Act, a $2tn package that would have radically extended childcare, free community college and subsidised health insurance, but which ultimately failed to secure the support of the Democrat senator Joe Manchin (a necessity given the evenly divided Senate). Winning political support for the act has required rowing back on climate ambition and more extensive plans to reduce costs for families; allowing further drilling for fossil fuels; and carve-outs to protect private equity profits from the corporation tax element of the act. For this reason, the act will and already has come under intense criticism from activists and climate groups.However, in the face of fierce political opposition it is a major – even landmark – achievement. It is also a win for the activists and economists who have been persistently pushing and providing ideas for the Biden administration to pursue an alternative approach to the economy and environment: market-shaping green industrial strategy to create good, green jobs; social investment; worker power and incentives for employers to offer decent pay, apprenticeships and profit-sharing with communities; higher taxes on the wealthy to reduce inflation and contribute to the costs, including through a new tax on share buybacks which only serve to boost investors’ incomes. These ideas are no longer stuck on the bench.Historically the US and UK have taken a shared, leading role in the intellectual development and political implementation of new ideas and policy paradigms. Whether we think about the postwar Keynesian consensus, the neoliberal revolution of Thatcher and Reagan or the third way politics of Clinton and Blair, both countries have tended to move in lockstep. Yet right now, in the context of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the Conservative party leadership race in the UK, our policy paths are diverging.The US has further to go than the UK when it comes to reducing climate emissions and building economic justice. The US has significantly higher levels of emissions (on an absolute and per capita basis) than the UK and the US is also the world’s biggest producer of fossil fuels. Similarly, inequality in the US is starker, and poverty deeper than in the UK. Put simply: the land of opportunity is not delivering for too many American citizens.But Democrat leaders are pushing through a bold agenda to break through deep political polarisation and reset the shape and direction of what US economic success looks like. The irony when we compare this with the UK is that the conditions are far more favourable here for action commensurate to the scale of the climate and nature crisis, an economic strategy that prioritises everyday people and places over wealth and profits, and for extending collective provision of the things and services we all rely on. We have a head start in terms of the social democracy basics. In sharp contrast to the US, there is more consensus across parties on the need for the government to take action on the climate and nature crises. Action taken now would be far less likely to be wiped away by an opposition win than the fragile progressive gains in the US.Biden can still stop Trump, and Trumpism – if he can find a bold plan and moral vision | Robert ReichRead moreThe Conservatives, who have held power for more than a decade, have in recent years flirted with some of those ideas – from May’s mission-oriented industrial strategy to Johnson’s net zero and levelling up pledges – recognising the electoral benefits of doing so. Yet at this moment, the Conservatives are plunging in the opposite direction to their US counterparts, and debating – in the middle of sharply rising inflation and a cost-of-living emergency – policies that are catnip for the Tory membership such as grammar schools and corporation tax cuts, rather than looking around the world or at the evidence on how to address the pressing problems of our time. Truss, widely seen as the frontrunner, has fallen back on outdated tropes of financial support as handouts and has virtually nothing to say on how she would achieve net zero, both for its own sake and as a response to the cost-of-living crisis. Nothing of substance is being suggested to address the creeping, real privatisation of the NHS as those who can go private rather than languish on a waiting list.It would be wrong to point at the US and claim it has its house in order or that lessons can be read in a simplistic way. But Biden and the activists and researchers around him are ambitiously forging a new kind of economic policymaking that seeks to rapidly decarbonise, reduce pressures on family purses through collective provision, and tax wealth and profits to fund this and quell inflationary pressures. The UK government – whoever it is headed by – should take note of the new economics rather than be left behind.
      Carys Roberts is executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Research
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      Yet more disgrace for Trump as the FBI raid Mar-a-Lago. Of course, he’s milking it | Marina Hyde

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      Yet more disgrace for Trump as the FBI raid Mar-a-Lago. Of course, he’s milking itMarina HydeLaw enforcement agents searched the 45th president’s mansion – and gave him another reason to run in 2024 Devastating news for the future Trump Presidential Library, already suffering acute supply problems after recent reports that the former US president frequently ripped up presidential papers and clogged toilets with them (home and abroad). Last night, the FBI carried out a raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach mansion in which Trump currently resides, sharing only several of its communal areas with paying Floridians. The raid – or “assault”, as Trump would have it – is thought to be related to his already-proven removal of records from the White House at the end of his administration, but could reasonably be linked to a number of active lawsuits and investigations currently being faced by the 45th president.Even so, it’s a development that has hit Trump and his family hard. Or opportunely, depending on how you look at it – and more on that later. “These are dark times for our Nation,” began an overnight statement by the former president, talking like a Star Wars opening crawl. Trump went on to say his property was “under siege”, which feels a little histrionic. Surely this was just a harmless law enforcement rally that mildly got out of hand, though not in a way that saw five people end up dead, a gibbet erected on the croquet lawn and small-state golfers barricading themselves into executive restrooms in genuine and rational fear of their lives? Alas, that wasn’t the line which the presiding inspo for the Capitol riots decided to go with, with Trump instead putting the monstrous impertinence of the FBI in perspective with the howl: “They even broke into my safe!” Lest you imagined you had hallucinated this attack line, Donald’s etiolated adult son Eric could be found honking it over on Fox News, where, as I am typing this, the story is currently being headlined “BIDEN’S FBI RANSACKS THE HOME OF POTENTIAL 2024 OPPONENT”. As Eric declared with incredulity: “They broke into a safe?! … I mean gimme a break!”You’ll be hugely taken with this notion that a safe is your special private place that NO ONE should ever touch, a kind of supra-legal repository whose contents are automatically placed beyond the legitimate attentions of any and all law enforcement agencies, no matter the gravity of federal crimes being alleged, and no matter how loudly your political opponents shriek “but his safe!” or simply “LOCK HIM UP”.As yet, there are no details of where in Mar-a-Lago Trump’s safe was located, though students of the resort’s interiors style will hope it was concealed behind the 1989 portrait of him entitled The Visionary. To be clear, I’m not talking about the nine-foot painting of himself that Trump paid for with $60,000 meant for charity, but the one where he’s wearing cricket whites as sunbeams break through some celestial clouds behind his head, and his expression says simply: “I dare you to report what I’m about to do to you, sweetheart”.FBI raids on former presidents; filing stuff in the U-bend – another hugely uplifting 24 hours in politics. Not for the first time, much of the most unwittingly revealing commentary on it all comes from Trump himself, who says of the raid, “nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before”. Well quite. Meanwhile, plenty of his most powerful supporters have lost no time in informing Americans that if this can happen to the former president, then the ordinary people are next. And yet, and yet … are they? Of all the things to lose sleep over in the contemporary US, the imminent peril of dozens of FBI agents turning up on your doorstep and finding classified presidential records among your ironing is arguably not one of them.Still, what kind of world are we living in when a man of the people is treated like one of the people? The whole business has appalled freedom-loving anti-elitist Nigel Farage, who this morning announced himself to be “shocked” by the FBI’s presence at Trump’s property, before concluding that “the deep state truly does exist”. Carry yourself with the moral and intellectual consistency of Nigel, who believes that rich and powerful men who are the subject of multiple active criminal investigations should be above the law, while he himself has previously endorsed a US political candidate who – among other things – believes that all homosexuality should be made illegal. A huge number of grim prospects are coming down the slipway, but the virtually locked-on prospect of Nigel using the cost-of-living crisis to respawn over the next year or so is definitely up there.For now, more immediate respawnings are available. Trump is already fundraising off the outrage his winged monkeys are whipping up after last night’s raid, and attacking its very legitimacy. “Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President,” was the way he characterised the actions of an FBI whose lifelong Republican director he personally chose for the job.As so often in the rabbit hole down which Trump has led us, I fear the news of the raid is not the unalloyed delight that many of his detractors may be celebrating it as. It surely makes it more, not less likely, that his 2024 presidential run will be announced in short order, very possibly breaking his agreement to hold off before the midterms. After days like these, what does he really have to lose, barring other people’s money? Each new probe is an added incentive to win and shut it down, pausing or permanently halting any number of lawsuits, and painting all reasonable investigation as clearly politically motivated, or – just like before! – an attempt at simple electoral theft. Never mind five towns ago, we passed “rational” five years ago. For all the drama of last night, the way back still remains entirely unclear.
      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
      What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde is published by Guardian Faber (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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      Finally, Donald Trump's misdeeds are catching up with him | Richard Wolffe

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      Finally, Donald Trump’s misdeeds are catching up with himRichard WolffeThe FBI Mar-a-Lago search suggests that the former president is no longer living in a protective bubble For a party that loves to stand on the thin blue line, Donald Trump is a curiously crooked leader. Here is a party, a grand old one, that is merrily revving up the old scare machine about crime in time for November’s congressional elections. Yet its likely presidential nominee finds the whole notion of laws and law enforcement an entirely alien concept – intended literally for aliens.Never mind that he may have broken multiple laws in taking classified materials to his private residence after leaving office. Never mind that he apparently flushed papers down the presidential toilet in breach of record retention laws, if not the plumbing protocol of half of the country.Trump is most outraged by the obviously criminal gang of people pretending to catch criminals, otherwise known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Such an assault could only take place in broken, third world countries,” he said, elevating such countries from the shithole status he previously conferred on them.FBI seizes documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home – live reactionRead more“They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”Well, Mr President, that’s quite an interesting question.Watergate was a criminal act ordered by an almost-impeached president, whereas Mar-a-Lago is the home of a twice-impeached president. Easy to confuse the two, obviously. Watergate is the tasteless home of ageing has-beens who hanker after the 1970s and 1980s. Mar-a-Lago is a spiritual twin.Sources close to the FBI (normally the secret code for the FBI press office) say that Monday’s raid was concerned with finding any more of those rogue records that mysteriously accompanied Trump to Florida. Trump somehow purloined 15 boxes of materials requested by the National Archives.In the hands of any other president, these records might have helped with the writing of those all-important presidential memoirs. But in the tiny hands of Donald Trump, they are unlikely to be intended for book-writing purposes. After all, his ghostwriter Tony Schwartz famously doubted that Trump had ever read an entire book in his adult life – not even the ones published under his name.That leads us to speculate what kind of probable cause the FBI has to seek a warrant to bust open Trump’s safe. The pressing needs of the National Archives are almost certainly not the foundation for this particular exercise of law enforcement powers.We obviously could speculate about the kind of papers the FBI might be looking for. There has been a singular tear in the time-space continuum around the person of Donald Trump on January 6 last year. Secret service texts have disappeared down digital wormholes, along with Pentagon records. Presidential call logs appear mysteriously blank.Perhaps the entire contents of the phone of Alex Jones might have prompted some new lines of inquiry. Or perhaps it was the sight of Trump’s fine profile at the Saudi-funded golfing boondoggle at his very own country club turned cemetery.Ours is not to question the motive or the conduct of the fine boys and girls who stand between us and the criminal elements destroying our civilization.Just listen to Trump’s own home-state senator, “Little” Marco Rubio, who just entertained the Senate with a rousing speech against the climate change bill that might stop Florida from disappearing into the ocean. In between talking about his cancelled flight and a Cuban bakery he loved, Rubio said he overheard a few regular people complaining about inflation, immigration and – worst of all – rampant crime.“I’m telling you that what the people by the millions, registered to vote, people that voted for Biden, people that voted for Trump, I’m telling you what they are worried about is the fact that the streets and many cities in this country have been turned over to criminals,” he claimed. “There are prosecutors funded by Soros who refuse to put people in jail. They won’t do it. Entire categories of crime they won’t even prosecute.”Well thank goodness the United States Department of Justice is not funded by the great boogeyman of antisemites the world over. Thank goodness it has finally recognized the entire category of crime known as the corrupt and seditious acts of a former president called Trump.FBI searches Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and seizes documentsRead moreBecause, seriously, we were getting worried that there was some kind of protective bubble that allowed all sorts of stuff to happen in Mar-a-Lago. A bit like international sports organizations in Switzerland.This latest turn of the screw leaves Trump’s cultish lackeys – sorry, Republican leaders – in a bit of a pickle. Given a choice between following the rule of law or the whims of a sociopathic narcissist with no scruples, the choice is obvious for the party of law and order.Almost the entire body of elected Republican officials in the nation’s capital, with a tiny handful of notable exceptions, find it impossible to muster a single word to condemn the ringleader of the brutal attack on the police who protected their lives and limbs on January 6.“These are dark times for our nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said, helpfully distinguishing his own residence from an identically named bungalow in Boise, Idaho.“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” he added, before bleating on about Hillary Clinton’s emails.Who wants to tell him that his presidency vanished almost 18 months ago, along with a justice department that could not prosecute him, a white nationalist mob intent on murdering his vice-president, and a bunch of fake electors ready to commit treason?Trump is a unique figure in our lifetime of American presidents. The clear and present danger is that he might not be the last.
      Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist
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