When Trump bleated out that the FBI was searching his winter palace, the GOP noise machine went into overdrive. “Rogue FBI!” they screamed. “If they can raid our lord and master’s manse, no one is safe!” they moaned. “Defund the FBI!” “Impeach/imprison/??? Merrick Garland!” And so on, ad nauseam.
So I have been waiting for the explosion, or at least the ducking and weaving and the lame excuses and the cries of “they redacted too much — what are they hiding???” from the stalwart defenders of His Haughtiness the Great Orange Shitgibbon. Now Trump himself was out there 30 seconds after noon screaming all of that, as were a few of his paid shills (at least, they hope to get paid). But mostly the GOP officeholders have said . . . crickets.
Republicans, Once Outraged by Mar-a-Lago Search, Become Quieter as Details Emerge
In the minutes and hours after the F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida this month, his supporters did not hesitate to denounce what they saw as a blatant abuse of power and outrageous politicization of the Justice Department.
But with the release of a redacted affidavit detailing the justification for the search, the former president’s allies were largely silent, a potentially telling reaction with ramifications for his political future.
Now, some commentators, including lawyers with expertise in this area, are arguing that obstruction of justice is a graver legal threat to Trump than the Espionage Act.
But by some measures, the crime of obstruction is as, or even more, serious a threat to Mr. Trump or his close associates. The version investigators are using, known as Section 1519, is part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a broad set of reforms enacted in 2002 after financial scandals at companies like Enron, Arthur Andersen and WorldCom.
That’s as may be. But given Republican willingness these days to ignore subpoenas, their efforts to stymie the J6 Committee, their defense of bottom-feeders like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for their refusals to cooperate with investigators, I rather seriously doubt an obstruction charge would cause them to abandon Trump. Much more likely, it’s the revelation of just what the FBI was looking for, what they found in the search, what they’d already found in the January boxes, that is making them go dark.
Back to the Weisman column in the NYT:
Some Republicans will no doubt rally around Mr. Trump and his claim that he is once again being targeted by a rogue F.B.I. that is still out to get him. His former acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said on Twitter that “this raid was, in fact, just about documents,” which he called “simply outrageous.” Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona and an ardent Trump ally, was on the right-wing broadcaster Newsmax denouncing the F.B.I. as politically biased, though he notably did not defend the former president’s possession of highly classified documents.
But generally, even the most bombastic Republicans — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Jim Jordan of Ohio — were at least initially focused elsewhere. Ms. Greene was posting on Friday about border “invasions.” Ms. Boebert noted on Twitter the anniversary of the suicide bombing of U.S. service members at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mr. Jordan was focused on an interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder. None tweeted about the affidavit. [emphasis added]
Part of this simply a concern that voters are getting Trump fatigue:
And voters are again distracted by Mr. Trump in the political spotlight, even as Republicans try to direct their attention toward the economy and soaring inflation on a day when the Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said efforts to control rising prices would exact pain on Americans.
All of this could mean that enough Republican voters grow weary of the division and drama around Mr. Trump and are ready to move on.
But the sudden and deafening silence following the release of the redacted affidavit tells me that some Republicans, at least, have awakened to just how much damage Trump may have done to our national security: Classified Material on Human Intelligence Sources Helped Trigger Alarm [at NARA, the FBI, and DOJ over the documents Trump was mishandling at MAL]:
C.I.A. espionage operations inside numerous hostile countries have been compromised in recent years when the governments of those countries have arrested, jailed and even killed the agency’s sources.
Last year, a top-secret memo sent to every C.I.A. station around the world warned about troubling numbers of informants being captured or killed, a stark reminder of how important human source networks are to the basic functions of the spy agency.
I will not speculate (though you are invited to) whether GOP officials are genuinely concerned about the vulnerabilities to our national defense or just about the vulnerabilities to their political careers if they fear the public anger over the revelations. It is enough — for now — that they may well be calculating that defending Trump has become a greater liability for them than the Trump base.
Either way, this is one more weapon for us to use in the midterms!