When the IRS audited the tax returns of
Paula Jones
, a victim of Bill Clinton’s sexual predations, suspicion fell on the president, who had a ruthless history of inflicting harm on people who crossed him. Was the 1997 audit politically motivated harassment intended to intimidate a woman who was embarrassing him?
Mike McCurry, who was White House press secretary at the time, was asked this question. He responded, “We may do dumb things from time to time, but we are not certifiably insane.”
This was an effective riposte because it could be generally acknowledged that the Clinton crowd would have to be crazy to abuse federal power so obviously as to persecute a lowly Arkansas state employee.
That’s not to say executive powers aren’t ever abused in this way. They have been by administrations before and since. But McCurry’s comment carried force because such a vendetta, though not unprecedented, was clearly beyond the pale — incompatible with what the public understood to be prevailing norms governing political behavior.
Our trouble a generation later is that no such understanding exists any longer. Our politics have become, to borrow McCurry’s words, “certifiably insane.” It is widely recognized that norms have been not just smashed to pieces but ground into powder and scattered to the winds.
It is in this context that one must view the
FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago
, the Florida home of former President Donald Trump. It is an event impossible to judge with confidence, and not simply because no such search has ever before been executed against a former president. Nor is the fog of political war made impenetrable simply because important facts remain concealed.
The remarkable event defies assured analysis (though partisans are pretending otherwise) because there is little or nothing normal left in our politics. The principals on both sides have track records of flagrant dishonesty and disregard for orderly procedures of government.
Trump’s distortions are legion and have multiplied since his defeat in the 2020 election. Even within the narrow context of the controversial FBI raid and the boxes of documents carted away, his explanations have shifted repeatedly and the exculpations he has offered are contradictory. Was the material classified or declassified, and if so, how? If not, was Trump entitled to take it away and keep it in an insecure room? Did the FBI “steal” his passports as he claims? It doesn’t seem so. Was his home “under siege,” as he said? The FBI had already packed up and left Mar-a-Lago when he made the claim.
On the other hand, the FBI doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt either. The agency has repeatedly proven itself second rate, unreliable, and mendacious during at least the last six years. We know, for example, that one of its lawyers, Kevin Clinesmith, falsified a document so the agency could secure official permission to snoop on Trump’s election campaign. We know, equally, that it used false and fanciful information supplied by Christopher Steele, which was originally concocted as opposition “research” by Hillary Clinton’s election campaign, after the agency had itself decided the former British spy was unreliable.
So it is reasonable to be suspicious when Attorney General Merrick Garland only justifies a search by 30 armed agents of Mar-a-Lago with the platitude that “no person is above the law in this country.” One cannot peremptorily dismiss the idea that removal of 20 boxes of documents may have been intended to cover-up FBI wrongdoing in the Russia collusion hoax. It’s impossible to assume that disinterested propriety explains Garland’s opposition to unsealing the affidavit upon which the search warrant was based. One cannot be confident that references to the Espionage Act aren’t a drive-by smear rather than a reference to a real crime likely to be prosecuted. And your sense of humor must be failing you if you don’t snort with derision at Garland’s outrage at the suggestion that the FBI isn’t in apple-pie order.
This is the pass to which we have come. The former president is not to be believed. The current president can scarcely be believed when he denies knowing in advance about the FBI search — indeed, it may be worse if he didn’t know than if he did. And the agency that executed has proven itself untrustworthy.
In parallel, ordinary people either tune Washington out entirely or loathe it above almost anything else. Again, it isn’t clear which is worse. Is it better that citizens of a once proud democracy feel utterly unconnected from their government, or that they engage with it only by their justified contempt, confusion, and resentment? It is a certifiably insane position for America to be in.
