The FBI siege of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home shows government politicization is rampant… but it could get him re-elected

As someone who has worked in the White House for two presidents and been a senior official in the Pentagon, I can safely say that the politicization of the US government is escalating to a dangerous new level.

As the world now knows, the FBI just conducted an unprecedented raid on former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home.

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Not just a past president, but the front runner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

Learning of the FBI raid on his Florida home, the former president said, among other things, “These are dark times for our nation as my beautiful home of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida is currently under siege and ransacked , and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States.”

Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey echoed the fears of millions of Americans after the raid.

The congressman said in part, “More like a Russian state than America… What they’re doing is something I never thought we could see in the United States of America.” There will be a backlash.”

Commenting on the shocking FBI action, Alan Dershowitz, the liberal, decades-long Harvard law professor who is considered one of the foremost experts on US constitutional law, said: “A crackdown should be a last resort, but this administration has the judicial system armed against it his political enemies…”

The alleged rationale for this politically chilling raid on the Trump home was that the former president may have violated The Presidential Records Act of 1978 by removing classified and other documents from the White House.

Except that for months the former president, his lawyers and staff have been openly working with the National Archives to look into what was stolen and what may need to be returned.

Just last February, former President Trump turned over 15 boxes of questionable documents to the National Archives.

A growing number of Americans believe the FBI crackdown was an overt political and partisan operation designed to bar Trump from running for office in 2024.

For those who doubt it, Hillary Clinton’s former attorney Marc Elias may have endorsed precisely this partisan strategy.

Said Elias, referring to a passage of U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071, which states: “Whoever having custody of such records, proceedings, maps, books, documents, papers or other things willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys, shall be liable to a fine under this title or to imprisonment for a period of not more than three years, or both; and he is disqualified from office and disqualified from holding office in the United States.

Politicians may use the police state to crack down on political opponents.

Florida Republican Marco Rubio said of the FBI’s raid on Trump’s home: “The use of government power to pursue political opponents is something we’ve seen many times in Third World Marxist dictatorships, but never before in America.”

Even Trump’s potential main rival for the 2024 Republican nomination immediately jumped to his defense.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said: “The raid on MAL is a further escalation in the arming of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents while treating the likes of Hunter Biden with kid gloves.

“Now the regime is getting another 87,000 IRS agents to use against its opponents? Banana Republic.”

As more Americans struggle to process an FBI raid on a former president’s home, one question seems to be sweeping the nation.

That said, will this unprecedented and possibly partisan-inspired crackdown turn former anti-Trump moderates, independents, and even some Democrats into Trump supporters for 2024?

Even a cursory glance at the tens of thousands of comments now covering news sites across the US reporting the FBI raid on Trump’s home shows that this may indeed be the case.

As an example we have here: “The extreme left just shot itself in the foot.

“This obviously political crackdown will turn many moderates (like me) into full blown conservatives. It was a big mistake just before the midterm elections.”

A “Big Mistake” That Leaves That Burning Question Unanswered: Did the FBI Just Elect Donald J. Trump President in 2024?

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and the author of The 56 – Liberty Lessons from these who risked all to sign The Declaration of Independence.