The FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, and what now?

 So that happened.  This is one of those mornings I reference Ben Bradlee, the longtime editor of the Washington Post.  Supposedly, he used to say that he wanted people to wake up every morning, open up the paper and say, "holy shit!"  Journalists would then call up professors and ask us to confirm, "holy shit, right prof, holy shit?"  My grad school advisor, Nelson W. Polsby, used to say that it was our job to say, "no, not holy shit, this is normal and ordinary, and historically precedented, and here's why."  But sometimes, there really is a holy shit moment.  Like when the FBI executes a search warrant on the home of a former president who very obviously wants to be president again dictator-for-life, and also has committed a fuckload of crimes, lies constantly, and wraps it all up in the most pathetic, blubbering, self-pitying victim narrative I've heard outside of a ___ Studies department.

And yet, through it all, I have been telling you that Trump will never be indicted nor convicted of any crime, and regardless of election results, he will be reinstalled in the Oval Office, come January of 2025.

Um... should I re-evaluate?

First, while stealing classified documents is not even close to the worst thing Trump did, it would probably be the easiest conviction.  "Easy" in any objective sense?  No, not in this country, which is filled with Trump cultists, but compared to anything related to January 6 or the 2020 election?  This would be easy.  Too many people are steeped in lies about 2020 for a related conviction to be possible.  This is straight-up.  Did he take the documents?  Yes.  Add in the Clinton thing, and this is about as close to an easy conviction as one could find.  It is at least possible to convict him.  That's not true for anything else.

Second, Garland had to sign off on this.  I've been saying that Garland wouldn't let Trump face any charges, at least in part because you can't convict him.  This shows that Garland is actually willing to... [gulp]... do something.

Third, and relatedly, you can't just stop at a search of Mar-a-Lago.  You need to follow through.  The DoJ is now committed to a path.  I'll leave it to others to describe the various possible paths, but you can't just execute a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, then walk away.

Fourth, this probably accelerates Trump's candidacy declaration, to undercut "legitimacy," but whatever.

Fifth, when it comes to questions of what the Trump cult and its most militant wing will do, who knows?  This country is already in a bad way.

Any way you cut it, this is a holy shit moment, not just for the fact of the search, but for the fact that it commits the DoJ to a path.  They just picked the biggest fight in the history of the Department of Justice.

Let's have some jazz.  Matthew Garrison, "Changing Paths," from Shapeshifter Live.  Matthew is both a virtuoso bassist in his own right, and the son of Jimmy, who was Coltrane's bassist.