In Its War On Trump And Wrongthink, The Regime Just Delivered A Death Blow To Rule Of Law

Ben WeingartenAugust 17, 2022

The unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is a major escalation in the regime’s war on “wrongthink.”

How else are we to interpret the descending of the regime’s praetorian guard on the home of its reportedly cooperating greatest critic, under a pretextual search warrant authorizing a fishing expedition, three months before a midterm election likely to serve as a rebuke of the regime and enhance the standing of its greatest foe?

The raid should be seen not only as a Rubicon-crossing moment in terms of the death of the rule of law under the guise of upholding it and the weaponization of the national security apparatus against its political opposition, but as part of a legal, political, and psychological warfare operation by a regime hostile toward the half of the country that disapproves of it.

There are several levels on which this assault is poised to play out.

It seems all but assured that President Trump will be indicted, perhaps on a whole raft of charges beyond those referenced in the search warrant, given the breadth of what was seized. That the Justice Department allegedly collected attorney-client privileged and potentially executive privileged materials during the raid, then refused Trump’s requests for a special master to review the records, is just one more piece of evidence for what has become crystal clear over the last six years: We are operating under a “Show me the man, and I’ll use and abuse the most awesome investigatory powers with total impunity to try and conjure a crime” injustice system.

And if you think the double standard in the treatment of any Trump ally versus, say, Michael Sussmann, let alone Hillary Clinton, has been glaring, imagine what we would witness with Trump before a D.C. swamp court.

Does anyone honestly believe he would get a fair hearing in front of a jury of his peers during a trial over which an impartial judge presides?

Does anyone honestly believe that were he to be convicted of one or several charges that the appeals process would prove any more legitimate?

Perhaps the last bastion of a modicum of legitimacy within our justice system — despite the best efforts of some of its members and other employees — is the Supreme Court. It could be the ultimate arbiter of his case and perhaps serve as his most favorable venue. Note, however, that Trump has been stymied there before, and not on the legal merits, but because Trump is and has been treated as uniquely below the law among presidents.

Were Trump to come before a court whose jurisprudential makeup he so significantly altered, it would draw the ire of the entire ruling class. The Dobbs pressure and intimidation campaign would look like child’s play relative to the onslaught that would follow. And we have seen how the Justice Department has allowed threats against Supreme Court justices to proliferate in not prosecuting those breaking federal law by menacingly protesting in front of their houses. Expect the most vicious assault on the Supreme Court perhaps in its entire history if this is where the case against Trump concludes.

But there’s another level on which the regime will punish its opponents following the Mar-a-Lago raid. We can expect a drip-drip of leaks for however long they are politically useful from the massive trove of documents the FBI sequestered. It can be assumed they will aim to dirty Trump and his congressional supporters in the most damaging ways, if nothing else, diverting attention from Democrat-led calamities in the run-up to the midterms.

It can also be assumed those leaks will target those in and around Trump’s orbit to freeze and, if necessary, crush them.

But perhaps most insidious will be the effort by the regime, already begun, to cast itself as the victim of the raid rather than the aggressor, and to use its victimhood status to persecute its political opponents ever more viciously.

Since even before Jan. 6, the regime has been pushing the narrative that Trump poses a unique danger to “our democracy,” not only as a political figure but in effect as the leader of a domestic terrorist army, and that those who support his agenda are inciting terror.

Hence the pronounced effort in the immediate aftermath of the raid to focus on how it unleashed a reported torrent of threatening rhetoric on social media. None other than Daniel J. Jones, the former Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer who played a central role in the Russiagate and post-Russiagate information efforts, was the key source of corporate media outlets in analyzing this rhetoric.

The regime and its media mouthpieces will hang the rantings and ravings of anonymous users on digital platforms and any violence by rogue actors that can in any way remotely be associated with Trump around the neck of the tens of millions of peaceful and patriotic Americans who support Trump or, at the least, oppose leftist overreach.

The regime has cleverly cast its critics as posing the most lethal to the homeland by intentionally conflating their dissenting views with “racial or ethnic animus” and/or “anti-government or anti-authority” sentiments. So it will use the furor over the Mar-a-Lago raid to further pursue them under a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism explicitly aimed at them.

Expect greater social media censorship, de-platforming, and de-banking of political undesirables. The effort to push a de facto, if not de jure, social credit system within America will likely only accelerate.

And what should we expect between now and Nov. 8 from law enforcement bodies that have used assets to concoct plots to kidnap governors and entrap people in the run-up to elections as recently as one cycle ago? Such gambits, along with accusations of widespread domestic threat inflation from FBI whistleblowers, speak for themselves.

At a minimum, we can expect a bevy of threat assessments from the national security apparatus, aided by a hysterical media, identifying grave and imminent threats to the homeland as emanating from those who criticize said apparatus, and would dare call to defund if not abolish/reorganize its various elements.

The regime has shown it will do what it can with whatever it has to demonize and hunt down opponents of its agenda in service of its power and privilege — not “democracy.”

Time will tell whether Americans know what time it is and choose to replace it. Either way, the costs will be significant.

Ben Weingarten is a Federalist Senior Contributor, senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and fellow at the Claremont Institute. He was selected as a 2019 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow of the Fund for American Studies, under which he is currently working on a book on U.S.-China policy. Ben writes on national security and foreign policy, economics, and politics for publications including City Journal, Conservative Review and PJ Media. He is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media, a media consulting and production company dedicated to advancing conservative principles. Ben is also a 2015 Publius Fellow of the Claremont Institute. You can find his work at benweingarten.com, and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.