The headline Crabgrass uses is the final paragraph of the Strib carry of an NYT report of the FBI raiding Mar a Lago. Two points -
First, no other president has been such an asshole, if not a criminal (innocent until convicted). Second, Kitsch, not beautiful.
(Using the carry instead of the original NYT item in linking? The NYT subscription wall sometimes (even often) gets in the way.)
In part -
The search, according to two people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, after he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.
Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action being taken to retrieve them.
[...] "After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate," Trump said, maintaining it was an effort to stop him from running for president in 2024. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries."
"They even broke into my safe!" he wrote.
Not a wholly flat learning curve. "Third-World Countries." NOT "shithole" this time.
Other reporting - Guardian, MSM carry of a Business Insider report, websearch = mar a lago fbi
There likely will be some follow-up coverage, many people hoping a Justice Department grand jury indictment will issue, the yield from this raid being a part of the evidence bolstering charges. Trump and others likely hope differently.
__________UPDATE___________
The NYT - Strib carry was put online yesterday. This morning, Aug 9, Strib features an AP carry -
Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson declined to comment on the search, including about whether Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally authorized it.
Trump did not elaborate on the basis for the search, but the Justice Department has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information after the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year. The National Archives said Trump should have turned over that material upon leaving office, and it asked the Justice Department to investigate.
There are multiple federal laws governing the handling of classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized location. Though a search warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected, federal officials looking to obtain one must first demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause that a crime occurred.
Two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the search happened earlier Monday and was related to the records probe. Agents were also looking to see if Trump had additional presidential records or any classified documents at the estate.
[...] Asked how the documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago, Eric Trump said the boxes were among items that got moved out of the White House during "six hours" on Inauguration Day, as the Bidens prepared to move into the building.
"My father always kept press clippings," Eric Trump said. "He had boxes, when he moved out of the White House."
Trump emerged from Trump Tower in New York City shortly before 8 p.m. and waved to bystanders before being driven away in an SUV.
[...] But in a social media post Monday night, he was much more unguarded, calling the search a "weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024."
Other Republicans echoed that message. GOP National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel denouncing the search as "outrageous" and said it was a reason for voters to turn out in November.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate, said in a statement on Twitter that it was "an escalation in the weaponization" of U.S. government agencies. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, said in a tweet that the Justice Department "has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization" and said that if Republicans win control of the U.S. House, they will investigate the department.
That Trump would become entangled in a probe into the handling of classified information is all the more striking given how he tried during the 2016 presidential election to exploit an FBI investigation into his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, over whether she mishandled classified information via a private email server [...] but the FBI did not recommend criminal charges because it determined that Clinton had not intended to break the law.
[...] Thomas Schwartz, a Vanderbilt University history professor who studies and writes about the presidency, said there is no precedent for a former president facing an FBI raid -- even going back to Watergate. President Richard Nixon wasn't allowed to take tapes or other materials from the White House when he resigned in 1974, Schwartz noted, and many of his papers remained in Washington for years before being transferred to his presidential library in California.
"This is different and it is a sign of how unique the Trump period was," said Schwartz, author of "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography." "How his behavior was so unusual."
The probe is hardly the only legal headache confronting Trump. [...]
Ancillary questions, what might the classified documents relate to and say, who, if anyone, Trump shared content with, and were copies made at Mar a Lago and given to others, possibly Russian or Israeli agents? What purpose might be circumstantially inferred from the nature of the particular documents withheld by Trump? Could any of the documents, if any were indeed found, contain information which might serve to blackmail someone? Was the taking of classified documents truly inadvertent as suggested by son Eric Trump? In particular, what was put by Trump into his safe? That question might go to motivation vs. inadvertence.
The chorus of Republican dismay over the event was perhaps orchestrated, and overdone. DeSantis, presumably, would want Trump out of the way of his own career ambition.
Last, the timing, why was this not done earlier? Were authorities paying out rope to give Trump time to further incriminate himself in some way, in the interim? By doing something with the documents such as sorting and putting some chosen "hot" docs away from others, into a safe, or sharing content or copies with other persons who would then be open to further criminal charges of mishandling classified information? Perhaps delay was based on attaining probable cause for issuance of a warrant. Perhaps if others gained access to classified documents a conspiracy charge might apply, where criminal acts of multiple persons can be used against others, and authorities were aware time might favor development of circumstantial evidence arguably able to bolster a trial showing of a wrongful intent.
As noted in the quote, the Justice Department remained silent about the event and facts underlying it happening now, as it did. That allows a field day for speculation.