WELL, BUT THE DOJ HAS BEEN THOROUGHLY CORRUPTED: Here’s Where FBI Officials Realized What Could Be the DOJ’s Goal in Raiding Mar-a-Lago.
What would the government do about the classified materials still stored at Mar-a-Lago? It’s a meeting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice didn’t want to have, but they were mulling options over how to obtain the rest of the files. NBC News penned a lengthy article about this heated meeting, where the FBI was concerned about the optics of raiding a former president’s home while top DOJ officials couldn’t care less. The bureau was also concerned about the political donations made by Jay Bratt, a top DOJ prosecutor, who supposedly was apolitical to his core, a consummate professional who harbored no anti-Trump bias: He just donated to the political rival party. Bratt wasn’t giving money like the late Sheldon Adelson, but it’s the principle of the matter—the officials in this room, at this rank, shouldn’t be making such contributions.
Steven D’Antuono, now retired, was then chief of the Washington bureau office for the FBI, and he wanted a conciliatory and less-than-hostile approach to repossessing the files at Mar-a-Lago. The funny part about this meeting was that the main narrative used by the DOJ to storm Trump’s Florida residence was over national security concerns. The house was guarded by the Secret Service. The files were in a secure location.
In D’Antuono’s mind, there was no need to execute a storm-the-Bastille-like operation. Everyone at this meeting knew their careers were on the line, along with the severe political ramifications if things went sideways. It’s also where the FBI stumbled upon the DOJ’s main aim against the former president regarding the files, the raid, and how to catalog the legal documentation for a judge to sign off on the search. Trump would need to be accused of committing a crime, one that could bar him from political office.
Whenever they tell you somebody’s an apolitical straight-shooter, an institutionalist, they always turn out to be the worst of political hacks. See, e.g., Merrick Garland.