The FBI raid: pushing the US closer to civil war?

What a spectacle America is making of itself, said Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal. As if the country weren’t already racked by division, the FBI last week saw fit to launch a raid on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into his alleged mishandling of White House records.

For several hours, agents apparently rifled through the former president’s papers, at one point even breaking into his safe. At a time when the nation is preoccupied with such pressing issues as inflation, Ukraine and the tensions over Taiwan, what made the Justice Department and the FBI decide that this was the moment for such a needlessly aggressive step? No former president has ever suffered the indignity of having his home raided in such a way. “This should never happen in the US. End of discussion.”

A ‘catastrophic mistake’

The raid may go down as “one of the most catastrophic mistakes in law enforcement history”, said Marc A. Thiessen in The Washington Post. The mishandling of classified material is a serious issue, but Republicans understandably feel that Trump is being singled out for special treatment.

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When Hillary Clinton came under fire before the 2016 election for improperly storing classified information on her private email servers while serving as secretary of state, nobody raided her home. By going after Trump in this partisan way, the FBI has only bolstered his credibility and increased the chances of him winning back the White House in 2024.

The raid has given Trump’s electoral prospects a big boost, agreed David Siders on Politico. “Completely handed him a lifeline,” groused a strategist who advises one of Trump’s potential rivals for the Republican nomination. “Unbelievable… It put everybody in the wagon for Trump again. It’s just taken the wind out of everybody’s sails.”

An ‘extraordinary’ response

The Republican response to the FBI search has been extraordinary, said Matt Ford in The New Republic. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, referred to it as “another escalation in the weaponisation of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents”. Texas senator Ted Cruz wasn’t alone in suggesting that it posed a threat to ordinary Americans. “They’re coming for YOU too,” he tweeted. It’s an absurd overreaction.

Countless search warrants are issued every day in the US. Quite why this one represented an abuse of due process is unclear. Former presidents may get some special perks, such as a pension and lifetime Secret Service protection, but they’re not above the law. The reason previous presidents haven’t been treated like this, said Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine, is that they weren’t crooks.

The oncoming ‘storm’

If both a federal judge and Attorney General Merrick Garland, himself a former federal judge, thought this search was justified, it’s only right that it was carried out, said Tim Alberta in The Atlantic. Still, I couldn’t help but “feel nauseous” watching coverage of the event. Anyone who has spent any time among the American Right – whether online or at Trump rallies, gun shows or right-wing churches – will know just how close the US is to tipping into “a scale of political violence not seen since the Civil War”.

The US is in an impossible bind, said David Brooks in The New York Times. It can’t allow Trump to get away with potential crimes because of the precedent that would set. Yet any attempt to bring him to justice could unleash violence on the streets, and would increase the chances of his re-election. “It feels as though we’re walking towards some kind of storm and there’s no honourable way to alter our course.”