Topic: Newsmax
It's been a while since we've heard from Conrad Black. Following the FBI raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound, Newsmax gave the Trump suck-up (and criminal who was the beneficiary of a Trump pardon) space for the first column it published by him in six months in an Aug. 15 piece:
The conduct of the Justice Department and the FBI in raiding President Trump’s home at Palm Beach on Aug. 8 must rank as among the most dangerous assaults upon the rule of law in the United States since what President Lincoln referred to as an “insurrection” (with a legal precision that has eluded the mountebanks who have so described the events of January 6, 2021).
The New York Times, an unofficial mouthpiece of the regime, disclosed that the raid was caused by a dispute over archives, and their reporter Maggie Haberman conveniently claims to have evidence about Mr. Trump flushing unspecified documents down a White House toilet.
Mr. Trump has been cooperating on this matter, per custom. Archives, after all, have been subject of friction with all former presidents (Richard Nixon’s literary executors litigated successfully over his papers for years after he died 20 years after he retired as president).
Any such complaint should have been civilly litigated. The correct procedure is a subpoena; a warrant is justified only where there is reason to believe that exigible material is apt to be destroyed imminently — impossible given that Mr. Trump was at New York and the records were safely locked up in his Florida home, and the FBI had already gone through the same papers extensively.
It was also improper for the 30 agents to break into the ex-president’s safe. Mr. Trump had been entirely cooperative. If there were any complaint that plausibly justified so immensely sensitive and explosive a step, it should have been referred to a special counsel to give the current partisan attack dog-attorney general, Merrick Garland, a patina of impartiality.
Black could be said to be an unofficial mouthpiece for Trump, and he parrots early pro-Trump talking points here. As it turned out, Trump was not, in fact, cooperating with this matter, which necessitated things to go beyond the civil litigation that authorities had been trying (and failing) to pursue with him.
After diversions toward Hunter Biden and Sandy Berger, Black's complaints continued:
As there was no danger of imminent destruction of anything, there was no excuse for a warrant, especially one executed with such a spectacular excess of force and drama against so eminent a target. Donald Trump was president when the material was moved to Palm Beach from the White House, and the president has the ultimate authority over classified documents.
This is apparently an effort to mouse-trap Mr. Trump in a records violation which might be used to disqualify him from holding a public office again. More than that, it appears to be a lawless effort to strangle the entire democratic process.
No sane person can imagine that this invasion of the former and probable future-president’s home was justified or executed with an acceptable motive.
Given that initial reports that the classified documents Trump absconded with to Mar-a-Lagoincluded nuclear documents turned out to be true, it was quite sane for the government to do what was necessary to get those documents back.
Black went on to rant that "The Democrats and the Fifth Column of anti-Trump nominal Republicans are now shaking in their shoes as Trump supporters reassert his control of the Republican Party and lead the polls toward reelection. Mr. Garland harasses parents who express reasonable opinions about school curriculum and does nothing to help reduce the skyrocketing crime rate." Actually, death threats from parents to school board members are not "reasonable opinions," and that's all Garland focused on, despite right-wing misinformation to the contrary.
As part of this kitchen-sink attack, Black dropped in a George Soros reference:
The American criminal legal system has long since been exposed as completely rotten. The federal criminal conviction rate is 98%, 95% without trial.
Ironically, George Soros had some reason in his hostility to American prosecutors but he made the grave error of promoting soft treatment of repeat violent offenders, instead of lessening penalties against nonviolent first-time offenders, which would be sensible and would be supported. Now the country has omnipotent prosecutors in a stacked system that is led by a seedy claque of Democratic Party Torquemadas.
There is a silver lining in this storm cloud. The Trump-haters must finally have aroused the irrepressible puritanical conscience of America. Obscured and anesthetized though it often is by the shabby venality of much of the system, uneasy though many Americans are about Donald Trump as president, this is an affront to every American who has any desire for an impartially just society.
Black really, desperately wants the raid to be a rallying point for Republicans:
They have made Trump, with all his infelicities, the candidate of lawful democracy. On Monday night, Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the Mar-a-Lago police raid was entirely appropriate and then said that we don’t yet know the facts; Republican Senate leader turned Mephistophelean Never-Trumper Mitch McConnell was silent, effectively complicit.
The choice will be clear: the great Democratic Party has descended to mere thuggery. If this disgrace is as malodorous as it now seems, Mr. Trump make a broad appeal to protect the integrity of the system and reject the criminalization of policy differences.
The Republicans should sweep the midterms, and should not hesitate to use the power of impeachment against those who are again attempting a pre-emptive coup d’etat. Each side accuses the other of lawlessness; this is the final escalation and Mr. Trump wins.
The only "malodorous" thing we see here is Black sucking up yet again to the man who pardoned him, as if he feels the need to repeatedly justify that pardon.
