Aaron Blake/WaPo:
The GOP’s inauspicious knee-jerk reaction to the Trump raid
One day, relatively soon, the heads of the Justice Department and the FBI are likely to be brought to Capitol Hill to testify about the historic decision to raid a former president’s home.
My working thesis is the GOP electeds opposes/d the Jan 6 Committee as structured because they’re guilty and want to protect themselves:
Members of Congress (and Trump) are free to reveal what’s being impounded, even if the FBI is silent. For example, Trump can show us the warrant. He won’t, but he can.
Harry Litman/LA Times:
The Mar-a-Lago search could signal the end of another ‘long national nightmare’
Why now? What explains the thunderous revelation that the FBI — doubtless with the approval of those at the highest levels of the Department of Justice — executed a search warrant on Monday at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence? The apparent focus was documents the former president removed from the White House.
A very plausible answer is that a charge related to official documents could swiftly and cleanly serve as the basis for a satisfactory resolution of the pox on the country that is Donald Trump.
A more straightforward, prosaic answer to why the warrant was served is that the Department of Justice has assembled evidence of probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found at Trump’s Florida home.
But of course when the suspect is a former president of the United States, the straightforward answer is just the beginning.
In addition to potential felonies, the 50¢ a day fine is not waived. And I hear the FBI were asked to keep their voices down.
Business Insider:
Feds likely obtained 'pulverizing' amount of evidence ahead of searching Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, legal experts say
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It's not an easy task to secure a federal search warrant against a former US president.
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Legal experts told Insider that agents must prove a high degree of probable cause.
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A former federal prosecutor, Gene Rossi, told Insider that Donald Trump was "in deep legal trouble."
NY1:
Nearly 60% of Americans say Trump should be charged for Jan. 6
What You Need To Know
- A new ABC News / Ipsos poll published Sunday found that found that 58% of respondents believe that the former president should be charged for his role in the Jan. 6 riot
- The results of the survey are mostly divided along party lines, with more than 90% of Democrats saying that Trump bears a “great deal” or “good amount” of responsibility for the attack on the capital, compared with only 21% of Republicans
- Though the hearings have already attracted millions of viewers, only 34% of those surveyed said they are following the committee's investigation, with just 9% saying they are following it closely
- Whether the hearings will have an impact on the upcoming midterms is still uncertain, with around half – 51% – of the respondents stating that the hearings have made no difference in how they plan to vote in the upcoming midterm elections
Susan B Glasser and Peter Baker/New Yorker:
Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals
How Mark Milley and others in the Pentagon handled the national-security threat posed by their own Commander-in-Chief.
But the gulf between Trump and the generals was not really about money or practicalities, just as their endless policy battles were not only about clashing views on whether to withdraw from Afghanistan or how to combat the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran. The divide was also a matter of values, of how they viewed the United States itself. That was never clearer than when Trump told his new chief of staff, John Kelly—like Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general—about his vision for Independence Day. “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade,” Trump said. “This doesn’t look good for me.” He explained with distaste that at the Bastille Day parade there had been several formations of injured veterans, including wheelchair-bound soldiers who had lost limbs in battle.
Kelly could not believe what he was hearing. “Those are the heroes,” he told Trump. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are—and they are buried over in Arlington.” Kelly did not mention that his own son Robert, a lieutenant killed in action in Afghanistan, was among the dead interred there.
“I don’t want them,” Trump repeated. “It doesn’t look good for me.”
Heather Cox Richardson/substack:
August 8, 2022
It’s been quite a day.
It began with Axios sharing photos of what purported to be White House toilets with torn up paper in them. The notes on that paper appear to have former president Trump’s distinctive handwriting on them. Axios got them from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has previously reported that Trump used to get rid of documents by flushing them. (By law, all presidential records must be retained.)
I am skeptical of these photos, myself—they seem a bit too perfect—but I do find the timing significant. If the photos are real, someone has had them for a long time but now feels that it is worth sharing them. If they are fake, they nonetheless demonstrate that Trump is a significantly diminished figure.
Next came news from the 2016 Trump campaign. Trump’s 2016 campaign chair, Paul Manafort, has written a book, and to sell it, he gave a long interview to Mattathias Schwartz of Insider. In the interview, Manafort admitted what the Senate Intelligence Committee said in their report about Russian interference in the 2016 election: he gave internal polling data from the Trump campaign to Konstantin Kilimnik, who, according to the Senate report, was a Russian intelligence agent. Manafort had previously denied this story.
...
And then, although the Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t tip off anyone about this, even after it had begun, Trump tonight released a statement saying that the FBI was raiding Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, property. “They even broke into my safe!” he complained. He called it “an attack by Radical Left Democrats” and said it was a sign that America has become a third-world country. But Trump himself appointed the current director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, after firing former director James Comey for investigating the ties of his 2016 campaign to Russia. Wray is hardly a “Left Democrat”; he served in the George W. Bush administration and is a member of the Federalist Society.
"Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Lachlan Cartwright/Daily Beast:
Tucker Carlson ‘Shitting Himself’ Scared That His Alex Jones Texts May Leak
Tucker Carlson is “shitting himself” over the possibility that texts between him and far-right conspiracy loon Alex Jones will leak, a source close to the Fox News star told Confider.
Carlson and the raving Infowars ranter trade text messages on a daily basis, according to two people familiar with their relationship. If made public, these sources said, the text messages would be “highly embarrassing” for Carlson.
Great thread, can read here or here.
Oh, and by the way:
