He looms like a colossus over our political landscape— trolling, poised to pounce. You can almost hear that music from Jaws. “Thump thump thump thump thump.” Rhymes.
Dems have done everything they can to discredit Donald J. Trump — this larger-than-life political phenom who came down that glittering escalator in 2015 to mark his entry into the arena, as only a gladiator could. They tried two impeachments and one special counsel investigation, only to learn what they already knew — the charges that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election were bogus, fueled by a phony dossier written by ex British spy Christopher Steele, leaked by big name US intel talking heads and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Washington Post & New York Times won Pulitzer Prizes for this nonsense. Turns out they, and the Pulitzer Board, believe more in the prevailing Dem narrative than they do in the truth.
And last night US Atty Gen Merrick Garland — who has failed to enforce the laws he swore to uphold, like prosecuting those who threaten Supreme Court Justices, and is instead persecuting Americans who protested peacefully at the Jan 6 Stop the Steal Rally — demonstrated that the Dems will stop at nothing to criminalize Donald J Trump, for fear he will again win the White House and decimate the Deep State.
Marshaling dozens of FBI agents, Garland ordered the unprecedented raid of the former president’s home in Palm Beach, FL. Agents left the premises with papers they will likely use to try to prove that the former president “stole” classified documents. Some, Trump allies, worry the FBI planted documents incriminating him.
Update: The NYPost’s Miranda Devine after this blog was posted that the FBI agents also rifled through Melania Trump’s wardrobe. For documents? And TMZ reported that the bureau deliberately timed the raid when Trump was out of town. The reason? Normally they would handcuff the target of their investigation.
In a statement issued on Truth Social, Trump said:
“These are dark times for our nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago [was] … under siege, raided and occupied…Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and conservatives in the upcoming midterm elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe!”
Trump thundered about the cruelties of a double standard of justice, one for liberal elites, another for the rest of us. Keep in mind that the agency Trump says he has been cooperating with — the National Archives & Records Administration — has a trigger warning on its most cherished documents, the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I guess that no longer matters, since Far Left Dems are systematically dismantling our foundational docs anyway. The hypocrisy is astonishing. Trump again:
“Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E-mails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. She even took antique furniture … from the White House.”
This is a point echoed yesterday by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The apparent political weaponization of DOJ/FBI is shameful. AG must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended with this raid. I served on Benghazi Com where we proved Hilliary (sic) possessed classified info. We didn’t raid her home.”
Riddled with Trump Derangement Syndrome, desperate to enact their extremist agenda on an unwilling America, the Dems have spent all year pushing a narrative that Jan 6 was an insurrection. The mayhem unleashed that day, the images of Americans breaching the Capitol, was sad. But an insurrection it was not.
Unlike the Democratic anger that greeted Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, unlike the Antifa & Black Lives Matter protests in our cities after George Floyd’s brutal death, the “Stop the Steal” Rally was largely peaceful. No neighborhoods, buildings or limousines burned to the ground. Were there some intent on doing damage? No doubt. But the four people who died that day were all Trump supporters — including the unarmed Ashli Babbitt, shot point blank by the Capitol Police.
Still, the FBI was empowered to unleash a reign of terror on any American who even attended the rally. In pre-dawn raids, they frightened and harrassed citizens, rousing them from bed, pushing them into the streets, rifling through their belongs. One elderly couple, Lora DeWolfe and Darrel Kennemer, who live on seven acres near San Marcos, Texas, attended the rally but did not enter the Capitol. On June 22 the FBI broke through the gate of their rural home, threw flash-bangs, handcuffed them, and trained lasers on them before searching their home for evidence. They were not arrested. “I vacillate between feeling mad and helpless,” DeWolfe said. “I was really sad. We just wanted an honest election.” Kennemer said the FBI targeted him for just being at the rally. “They’re corrupt, and they’re trying to scare us,” he said. It was a campaign of intimidation, accompanied by a trashing of their due process rights.
Now, hundreds of Americans are still in prison, denied a speedy trial, accused of misdemeanors like “parading without a permit” or “obstruction of justice.” DC juries and judges, infused with the Dem insurrection narrative, are punishing them severely. Guy Reffit never entered the Capitol on Jan 6 but he protested on the Capitol grounds, in possession of a gun. He was sentenced to more than 7 years, after the FBI recruited his son Jackson to lure him into conversations and tape him making inflammatory statements about the election. Where I come from, that’s called free speech. All this while George Soros-funded DAs in blue cities release criminals with long rap sheets, including for murder, sending crime rates soaring in our big cities.
By any measure, the treatment afforded some of these prisoners would not even meet the standards of the Geneva Convention. Offered no bail, awaiting excessive sentences that will bankrupt their families, several have killed themselves. Mark Aungst, a gas field well service technician, did not attack any officers or engage in any violence on Jan 6. He did not destroy or damage any property. He took images on his cell phone. According to federal prosecutors, he committed the misdemeanor crime of “parading or demonstrating inside a restricted building.” This month, he killed himself. Another suicide was Matthew Perna, facing years in prison. As his February obituary noted, Perna “didn’t break, touch, or steal anything. He did not harm anyone, as he stayed within the velvet ropes taking pictures. For this act he has been persecuted by many, (including) people who had never met him.”
Some Jan 6 prisoners are being denied medical treatments. Chris Worrell was released from DC jail by a judge after prison officials refused his cancer treatments. Still others are being denied their benefits. Just when the wife of one incarcerated Jan 6 prisoner thought things couldn’t get worse, the VA called to tell her they were suspending all of her husband’s benefits. “This is what you have when vindictive leftists get in charge of major parts of the government,” said Rep Louie Gohmert (R-TX), one of the few in Congress to stand up for the Jan 6 defendants. No doubt the decision was blessed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who told “60 Minutes” he was “very disappointed” in how many veterans rallied that day. This is hardly a surprise from a Pentagon chief who cares more about teaching Critical Race Theory to his troops than installing group morale that is the essence of a strong military.
Left unexplained is the charge by some prisoners that there were FBI operatives in the crowd that day, egging the crowd on to breach the Capitol. Jeremy Brown, a former Green Beret, went to Washington on Jan 5 to provide security to VIP speakers. He claims he was approached by FBI agents in December 2020 to serve as a provocateur at the rally. He says he turned them down, but has a recording that he hopes to present should he ever be allowed his day in court. Meanwhile he sits in jail, where he has been for more than 250 days, speaking to any who will listen.
Adding credence to this charge is the recent admission by FBI Director Christopher Wray about Steven D’Antuono, who ran the FBI’s Detroit office when paid informants allegedly tried to lure Trump supporters into kidnapping Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Of the four charged in the case, two were acquitted and two argued entrapment, winning mistrials. Now, Wray admits, D’Antuono has been promoted to run the DC field office, leading the investigation into Jan 6.
Keep in mind, President Trump authorized National Guard troops to be on stand-by for the rally, but neither Speaker Nancy Pelosi nor DC Mayor Muriel Bowser ever called them up. It turns out that Liz Cheney, daughter of neo-con and former VP Dick Cheney, now a darling of the Dem autocracy, was instrumental in preventing the Guard’s deployment. Hopefully by next week she will be defeated — but don’t look for her to disappear. Like her father former Vice President Dick Cheney, neocons and RINOs have a habit of reinventing themselves to cling to power.
The government refuses to release the camera footage of that day, at entrances where Capitol Police officers reportedly opened the doors to protestors. If the doors were open, then there was no breach. They were invited in.
One who is especially aggrieved about this is the Squad’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You can hear the fear in her voice on the video below.
Why have these defendants been stripped of their rights? Because they are in the crossfire of a concerted, even desperate effort by Dems to paint this protest as an insurrection in prime-time hearings with high-production values created by Hollywood talents. Why? Because the 14th Amendment — the one with the due process clause the Justice Dept ignores — prohibits anyone from running for federal office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”
Donald Trump is like oxygen for the Far Left. They stoke the embers of his presidency, of his MAGA nation, encouraging even as they fear his second presidential term. Perhaps mindful the hearings are not turning public opinion, the DOJ has reportedly convened a grand jury to prosecute Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election results. This is at best ironic, as Dems — led by Speaker Pelosi’s daughter Christine — challenged the 2016 election results by lobbying the Electoral College to overturn the results. The DOJ did not come after them, and no one in the mainstream media accused them of threatening our democracy. Maybe because the Left has already embraced Orwellian totalitarianism, complete with a Gestapo FBI.
As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich put it, “What's even more troubling and what every American, whether you're a Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter, liberal conservative, doesn't matter [should worry about.] If 30 FBI agents can take over the house of a former President of the United States and probable candidate for president, what can they do to you? … And I think it's a very scary step towards a police state eliminating the constitution as a real document.”
It’s been clear for a long time that this Justice Department has a double standard of justice. Parents who stand up for their children, questioning school boards about their policies of sexualizing children and teaching racism, are put on FBI terrorism lists. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has been the subject of several threats on his life by leftwing activists. One man, a news network cameraman, was sentenced to six months of house arrest. Another, who traveled from Portland to Washington D.C. to kill Gaetz, has not been arrested. The Capitol Police recommended it. Justice Department said no.
Unlike any figure on the scene today, Donald J Trump is a cultural and political magnet, the likes of which we may never see again — enormous accomplishment, burdened by epic baggage. The contrast to his successor could not be greater — clinging to a 38% approval rating, Joe Biden is the least popular president in US history. Personal flaws aside, under 45 we had prosperity and peace. Every day under 46 brings new misery — parents still can’t find formula for their babies, workers can afford gas or groceries but not both and farmers are losing their land and with it, our food. Oh and new wars of 46’s design — emptying our treasury but not putting boots on the ground — are bankrupting our economy, already on the cusp of a depression. Add the assault on women’s sports and on the innocence of children, raising our taxes even as the IRS spends $700k on ammunition, and it’s no wonder his own party is trying to dump the incumbent they hoisted on a pedestal a mere eighteen months ago.
The lure of Trump’s outsized persona is unmatched by anyone, AOC included. Last night, as soon as they heard about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, hundreds gathered outside, brandishing their Trump gear and flags, to show solidarity.
“As soon as I saw it, I drove here from Tampa (a 3+ hour drive). This is nuts,” said J. D. Kennon. “We all know what you're trying to do, DOJ. You're trying to create some kind of charge, so he's not going to be able to run for re-election.”
Another Trump supporter agreed. “They're going to do anything they can to get him. They're terrified of him,” Mike Baffumo said. “And it's not because of any other reason than the policies that he supports: America First policies.”
The other day I read about a restaurant in Belleville, TX (population 4,206) somewhere outside of Houston. Opened in 2020 by a second-generation Lebanese family grateful for 45’s economic policies, the place is called Trump Burger. “Being an immigrant from a place where everything is bad and you work for almost $200, you see somebody like him to support the country and get the economy doing better,” Roland Beainy told the Houston Chronicle. “Me being an entrepreneur, I appreciate what he did.”
Apparently a lot of people do. Beainy said he thought the business would suffer after President Trump’s 2020 departure, but to his surprise, tourists come every weekend, dining on Trump Burgers ($10.99), Trump Tower ($13.99) and the First Lady Chicken Sandwich ($10.99). I don’t know if anyone has ordered the Biden Burger, described as “1 oz beef, topped with tomato lettuce (not fresh ) and our old buns” for $50.99.
Trump’s hold on the nation’s imagination has so far resisted all efforts by Dems to douse the affection that at least 74 million Americans still hold for him. Will it be enough for a comeback? Will the FBI raid make it more likely he will run, and win?
No one knows. But make no doubt. He stands for democracy, and we are in his debt.
Trump put out a video, called A Nation in Decline. It will leave you shaking, for our nation, its Gestapo FBI and its Venezuelan politics. And wondering, about a 2nd term.
Excellent article Johanna!
Once again the progressive marxists have over reached. Instead of just filing a subpoena duces tecum (a subpoena to seize specific documents) they storm President Trump's home and seize multiple boxes apparently without fore knowledge of the contents (a violation of law). Is this a fishing expedition to find something on Trump or an opportunity to seize information Trump may have on the deep state under the guise of a violation of a National Archives agreement concerning possible classified documents that should not have been removed from the White House. I suspect the documents seized under this hoax will be used to charge President Trump with some fraudulent violation of law so that a grand jury can then indict him to try and prevent him from running for president. Welcome to 3rd world politics, where the national police (FBI) are weaponized to falsely prosecute political opponents and the constitution is just an old piece of paper. God Help us all!
Most are aware of Newton's 3rd Law of Physics. Newton's third law: If an object A exerts a force on object B, then object B must exert a force of equal magnitude and opposite direction back on object.
Everyone knows about the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Before August 8, Joe Biden's complete incompetence had convinced me that Donald Trump was probably too old to be POTUS again.
After the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, I have reconsidered my view regarding Donald J. Trump resuming his rightful place in the White House.
I just joined Truth Social and I hope millions of others are doing the same thing today.