Tread carefully. The FBI raid on Trump's home could tear America apart

More than 30 federal agents on Monday did something never done before in American history.

They descended on the home of a former president and searched and seized his belongings.

As the political right exploded with outrage, the U.S. Justice Department that ran this operation tuned out the public and went silent.

Twenty-four hours later the White House had nothing to say, only that President Joe Biden learned from “public reports” about the court-ordered search.

His top aides “were stunned” to read about it on Twitter, The New York Times reported.

The White House kicked all other questions to the Justice Department.

Which was still silent.

Pray the FBI raid is not a fiasco

If you are a Republican or Democrat or somewhere in between, this is the time you start praying that the planning that went into the search and seizure at Mar-a-Lago was a hell of a lot better than the planning that went into managing its frenzied aftermath.

Because if not, we’re all in trouble.

This was not your run-of-the-mill search warrant. This was an invasion of the home of a man who had occupied the White House and won 74 million votes in the last election – Donald Trump.

It's a Democrat nightmare: FBI's Mar-a-Lago search is helping Trump

If it turns out that federal agents demanded entry to his home for piddling reasons or for larger crimes never proved, the 74 million will rage.

Let us all hope the White House is lying about foreknowledge, because an attorney general who shatters all precedent by sending agents through the front door of his boss’s political rival, owes it to the sitting president of the United States to alert him first.

To fail to do so is dereliction in the extreme.

Merrick Garland reveals his myopia

Attorney General Merrick Garland may have wanted to give Joe Biden plausible deniability, but he has hung a lantern on his own shortsightedness.

These are not ordinary times in America. For nearly five years we have seen political violence breaking out and escalating in city streets and in the halls of Congress. Downtowns have burned, activists have marched and the politics have hardened on both sides, with extremists tugging us violently to the left and then to the right.

The smartest among us fear they’re seeing the end of our American story.

“One of the reasons I’m glad to be as old as I am,” said conservative economist Thomas Sowell, “is that it means I may be spared seeing what’s going to happen to this country.”

Atlantic essayist and political liberal Caitlin Flanagan wrote, “Well, looks like the Experiment is winding down. Never let anyone shame you for having been an American. This was the country that created the free world.”

The FBI may have good reason to gather evidence in the home of Donald Trump and were clearly authorized by a federal judge to carry out the search, but this was still a highly provocative act when all is tinder dry in America.

American conservatives are furious

Democrats should not underestimate the anger of conservatives at this moment.

Sen. Marco Rubio railed that this looks like what happens in “third world Marxist dictatorships,” reported Politico.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the search was “next-level Nixonian … to target a former president and political rival.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been at loggerheads with Trump since Jan. 6, said, “No former President of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history. Yesterday’s action undermines public confidence in our system of justice.”

Republicans who last weekend were estranged from Trump are now returning home.

“I had gotten calls from people last night that were getting kind of tired of Trump, not so much they wanted to move on from him, but more that they were sick of the drama. Well, that’s over,” Shiree Verdone, co-chair of both of Trump’s Arizona campaigns, told Politico. “Just talking to people now, they are irate, and they are ready to support Trump. Even some people who were not full Trumpers, but are so upset with what happened [FBI search]. It seems this is really going to elevate Trump.”

Joel Pollak at Breitbart News tweeted, “I’m on record as preferring an alternative to Trump in 2024. But this raid will make many people like me rally behind Trump – for all his flaws – to stop the abuses of power by federal law enforcement, intelligence services, military brass, and, most of all, Democrats in Congress.”

James Blair, a Republican operative, told Politico, “Americans will view this as an aggressive escalation of Democrats’ move toward silencing political opponents. Trump’s voters will mobilize, and he will earn new ones because sensible people in the middle will think this is a bridge too far.”

This could boost Trump in ways we never dreamed

There are conservatives who have tried to understand where the Justice Department is leading.

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, theorized in a superb analysis in National Review that investigators are using a warrant connected to the mishandling of classified documents to find evidence that shows Trump knew his “Stop the Steal” claim was false. That in turn could lead to indictments arising from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats, for their part, have been largely silent. They know this action throbs with consequence. Their fear is palpable.

It should be.

If this investigation proves as flimsy as the Russia-gate allegations that consumed their party for two years, we may be in for Trump 2.0.

Or something far worse.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump FBI raid could tear America apart. Did Garland not get that?