On the menu today: FBI agents raid Mar-a-Lago on a hunt for documents, tonight’s primaries in Wisconsin offer further clarification as to how much pull Trump still has in the GOP, and new polling suggests that Democrats might be in for an even worse November than they fear.
The FBI Raids Mar-a-Lago
Last night, Donald Trump himself broke the news that FBI agents had entered his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, apparently in a search for documents. Subsequent reporting suggests that the hunt was related to an ongoing Department of Justice probe, investigating Trump’s handling of classified information.
The actual warrant for the investigation has yet to surface — and spokespeople from both the DOJ and the FBI have been quite tight-lipped thus far — but most reporting suggests that the reason for the FBI’s trip to Trump’s home had to do with the claim that he may have taken classified information with him when he left the presidency. Here’s more from the Wall Street Journal:
Officials can face up to five years in prison for removing classified materials to an unauthorized location. The penalties for breaking other laws related to the removal of official records also include disqualification from holding federal office—including the presidency. . . .
Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, who was present during the FBI search, confirmed federal agents “seized paper.”
In February, the National Archives and Records Administration told a congressional panel the former president had classified government records at his Florida residence, saying it was in communication with the Justice Department, which is investigating the matter. Messages left for a National Archives and Records Administration spokesman weren’t immediately returned. . . .
To conduct such a search, the FBI would need to convince a judge that there was reason to believe there may be evidence of a crime to be found at that location. Such a move would also likely require signoff from the highest echelons of the Justice Department, though a spokeswoman wouldn’t say what role Mr. Garland played.
Republicans have responded to the news with some intensity. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said that if the GOP takes control of the House in November, Attorney General Merrick Garland should expect an investigation into last night’s raid.
While much of the response from GOP leaders expressed support for Trump, the most common refrain in the commentary thus far has been concern over the lack of clarity about the reasons for the raid — and the fear that this is just another example of a Democratic administration using executive agencies to harass or punish its political opponents.
As Charlie Cooke pointed out in a Corner post this morning, much of the commentary and reporting seems to have presumed that, because the FBI executed this raid, it must’ve had a good enough reason to do so. That may well be true, but there’s little evidence yet that this was the case. And, as Charlie notes, none of the commentators insisting that this raid must have been justified have yet spoken to what precisely would have justified it — or what, in their view, would constitute an unjustified raid.
I’ll echo Charlie’s call for the warrant to be made public immediately. Until then, all we’ll get from both sides of the aisle is useless posturing designed to get voters angry ahead of the November midterms.
Eyes Turn to Wisconsin for Tonight’s Primaries
In Wisconsin, voters are heading to the polls today to vote in a number of major primaries, including in races for governor and the state legislature — and several of the primaries feature candidates endorsed by Trump.
The biggest of the three primary contests is the race to become the GOP candidate for governor. The winner of tonight’s primary will challenge incumbent Democrat Tony Evers, who unseated Republican former governor Scott Walker, in November. In this race, former Wisconsin lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch is facing off against Tim Michels, who owns a large contracting company based in Brownsville, Wis.
Michels has managed to obtain Trump’s endorsement, while Kleefisch is backed by both Walker and former vice president Mike Pence. A detailed article in Politico has more on this race:
Kleefisch had been seen as the nominee-in-waiting. But Michels’ relatively late entry to the race, powered by his self-funding and then by Trump’s endorsement, quickly turned the race hypercompetitive.
Kleefisch has backing from traditional Republican power centers in the state, including Walker and Vos. But Trump made a late bid to back Michels, a businessman who lost to Democrat Russ Feingold in a 2004 Senate race, and the former president attacked Kleefisch from the stage at a rally in southeastern Wisconsin late last week.
(Trump had been bothered by a picture he saw of the teenaged children of Kleefisch and state Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn attending prom together, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Hagedorn is a conservative who sided with the court’s liberals on various 2020 election-related cases.)
And this isn’t the only Wisconsin race in which Trump has become entangled. He’s also backing Republican Adam Steen, who is attempting to unseat state-assembly speaker Robin Vos, over the latter’s refusal to “decertify” the results in the 2020 election — even though Vos launched a review to investigate the outcome, and even though he has been an influential and effective conservative in Wisconsin state government.
The results in Wisconsin will be yet another test of how influential the former president remains within the party, and especially whether his particular brand of grievance politics is strong enough to overcome the advantage of being a well-known fixture of a state Republican party.
New Polls Suggest Democrats Are in for a Rough November
Politico has a story this morning on a fresh slate of internal polls, all of which suggest that Republicans might expect to pick up House seats even in areas once considered Democratic strongholds:
Four surveys conducted in late July reveal close races in open seats in Oregon, Colorado and California that President Joe Biden carried by between 11 and 15 points in 2020. Taken all together, GOP operatives view the data as a sign that Biden’s sinking approval numbers could drag Democratic candidates down enough to bring deep blue turf into reach.
The voter registration and partisan lean of the districts all strongly favor Democrats, and it will be a heavy lift for Republicans to flip any of these seats. Moreover, the only polling available in the districts are internal Republican figures, which can sometimes be rosier than reality for the party.
But the numbers comport with general assessments about the state of the House map from strategists of both parties, as well as the close results of the 2021 statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Altogether, the tightening polls suggest that some super-blue seats could be in play in November, which would mean Democrats may have to expend precious resources there on defense — especially because they lack well-funded incumbents.
If Republicans are poised to make races interesting even in these sorts of districts, imagine how punishing elections in swing districts are going to be for Democrats. It’s a given that the GOP will take back the House in a few months’ time. The only question is: How big will their majority be next year?
ADDENDUM: Jim might be off enjoying vacation, but I’m confident that he would approve of my using this space to remind his regular readers of my new book, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, co-written with Ryan Anderson. If you have been frustrated by the general tenor of the abortion debate since Dobbs, the book will be a helpful resource as you reflect on how we should reshape culture and restructure our abortion policy in post-Roe America.