By Kostas Raptis
The Financial Times spoke of an “unprecedented” event. The Guardian, again, spoke of entering “uncharted territory”.
But the investigation carried out by FBI forces on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida mansion, is not the only such test facing the 45th president of the United States. On Tuesday, a Washington appeals court ruled in favor of the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, which is demanding the former president’s tax returns. On Wednesday, the one-time occupant of the White House had to invoke the Thursday Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects against self-incrimination, during his sworn testimony to the office of New York Attorney General Leticia James, who is investigating allegations of fraud by part of the Trump group, namely falsely overstating the value of its assets in statements to financial authorities. Also next week, Trump’s one-time lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is expected to testify in a Georgia court in the case of the White House’s alleged effort to tamper with the count of the 2020 presidential election results in that state. And with the end of the summer recess, the work of the congressional committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill will resume.
All of this creates a legal cordon around Trump at a time when everyone is waiting not if, but when, he will announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. A candidacy that politically seems almost certain to receive the Republican nomination, despite the resistances of more conventional party leaders. Notably, in the state of Wisconsin (which Trump narrowly won in 2016 and lost just as narrowly in 2020), the former president scored a major intra-party victory this week as his pick, Tim Mikels, a construction company co-founder with no political background, defeated in the Republican primary for the choice of candidate for governor Rebecca Cliffis, who was supported by former vice president Michael Pence and the party establishment.
The most spectacular of all recent developments, the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago is reportedly related to allegations that Trump has misappropriated classified documents from his presidency. Already in an earlier phase, fifteen boxes of documents, among them letters from Barack Obama and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, were removed from the mansion in (partial, it seems) compliance with a warrant to transfer them to the National Archives. Just in time, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman’s publication of photos of Trump’s handwritten notes flushed down a toilet provided a glimpse into Trump’s peculiar views on the fate of official mail.
But if this is the only charge that justifies the FBI’s first-ever raid on a former president’s residence, the disproportion of means and ends is glaring. Even more so when Hillary Clinton’s corresponding adventure, with the thousands of e-mails on a private server, ended without consequences, to the great indignation of Trump and his “people”.
But the crux of the matter is the extreme polarization of American political life, at a time when the popularity of President Biden and Vice President Harris is in tatters and the Democrats are expected to be headed for a major defeat in the midterms due to the economic crisis. elections next November. The political environment that inspires Trump’s ambitions of a spectacular comeback in 2014 is leading his opponents to mobilize more and more legal obstacles, with the possible goal of even banning his candidacy by decision of the Senate, due to “participation in posturing”. (The that the Supreme Court is controlled by the Republicans, with the decisive role of three judges appointed by Trump, nevertheless creates a counterweight in this war on both sides of political instrumentalization of the institutions).
In any case, the “spiral of demonization” functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy that justifies the deployment of increasingly extreme means, delegitimizes political processes, and heightens anger in the social base of both camps.
Source: Capital
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