The FBI is poking the bear with this Trump raid – let’s hope they find something

Imagine for a moment you are Christopher Wray, the eighth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Graduate from Yale, distinguished lawyer, wide experience in private practice and public prosecutions, awarded the Edmund J Randolph Award – the Department of Justice’s highest award for leadership and public service.

You were appointed to the FBI in the usual Trumpian chaos in 2017. You may or may not think you are part of the mythical “deep state”, and you may or may not seek to use the fact that President Trump gave you the job to prove that you’re not part of that establishment.

Even so, do you really, really want send your agents into Trump’s “beautiful” Mar-a-Lago home, an act unprecedented in US history? Do you want to be persecuted by the Trump mob? Do you want to be defamed by the biggest gob on the planet, Donald J Trump, a man so deluded he thinks he’s still the rightful president? Do you want to give Trump and his mad conspiracy-crazed cronies any incitement to repeat the events of 6 January 2021? After all, many of them, dressed as shamans or slobs, are armed and dangerous. I sure wouldn’t.

You would need to persuade a judge to issue a federal search warrant, which is hardly routine in these circumstances. Though such a warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are exactly expected, law enforcement agencies such as the FBI must clearly demonstrate the possibility that evidence of illegality will be found.

So the fact that Wray is braving the wrath of Trump and of the federal judiciary if he’s botched it suggests that he has set himself a high bar for getting his hands on the papers. There must be some very interesting and significant official presidential and security documents lying around the Trump residence. Those, that is, that haven’t been shredded or stuffed down the bog (according to rumour), and which should by statute be preserved in the national archives.

Because the very fact that they are missing-presumed-snaffled should be sufficient to disqualify Trump for high office and a presidential run in 2024. Heaven knows what might be lying around in Trump’s safe.

So, like Wray, I hope it’s worth it, because, ironically enough, in trying to discover what was said and done on 6 January 2021, the FBI and the Biden administration are provoking some of the maddest of hotheads on God’s green earth. These people, as we witnessed last year, are prepared to storm government buildings and take on the police, national guard and the army if needs be, in order to “save America”, as the plainly fraudulent slogan goes.

Here, now, in the third decade of the 21st century we can see with our own eyes the slow collapse of some of the central principles and pillars of American democracy, a process that has been eroding the American republic on and off since 2016, and which has its roots in much longer-standing divisions.

The rule of law, the peaceful transition of power, the integrity of the judiciary and the federal agencies – all have been trashed, sometimes literally, by Trump and the Trumpites. These are people who would have happily hanged Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi because they were working towards their perception of the will of the The Leader. It is fascistic, and we may as well face up to that.

As the FBI and the courts seek to uphold the law and gather evidence about possible presidential wrongdoing, they are chastised by Trump in the most twisted, grotesque terms – “prosecutorial misconduct” and “the weaponisation of the justice system” to prevent him from running for the White House again.

“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World countries,” he said. “Sadly, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”

Trump allies – most of the Republican Party now captured by the cult of Trump – are themselves agents of dictatorship. Marco Rubio, the man who would like to be Trump, tweets: “Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships.”

Trump declares, with his usual melodramatic menace: “These are dark times for our nation… Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the United States before.”

Of course it hasn’t, because no president has abused the office with more abandon than Trump.

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What next? More of the same. More days like 6 January when the Trump mob used violence to achieve their ends, a private army of stormtroopers at the disposal of their leader. More legal wrangles up to and including the Supreme Court. Endless stress-testing of the Constitution, possibly to destruction. More division. More weaponisation of the judicial process by Trump. Another fractured and inert Congress after the November elections. More stasis. More climate denial. More wilful risks with US security. More protectionism. More isolationism. More denial of human and civil rights.

And if Trump wins in 2024? A transition into something closer to authoritarian rule, behind the rule of law, beyond logic into a world where Trump can pardon himself for anything – all underpinned by Trump agents in the Supreme Court and Congress.

Trump Vs Wray? I just hope the FBI has got this right.