RELEASING A REDACTED AFFIDAVIT WILL SOLVE NOTHING

In case you doubted that threats of violence can cow a person, consider the case of Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart, the judge who approved the search warrant for Mar-A-Largo to retrieve the stolen national security documents Donald Trump had taken when he left the White House and was refusing to return while his possession of these documents threatened the secrets with exposure to our enemies when he sold them to Putin.

The Thousand-Year MAGA went after the judge tooth and nail, hammer and tongs. He was doxxed, his address was published, the names of his wife and children were published and “credible threats” of violence agains the family were made. His community Shabbat had to be canceled due to security concerns - that Friday and this past Friday.

That has to be scary.

I am certain that, for a guy who had previously lived his career in anonymous obscurity, known only to those who had business in his court and who knew him in his community, this event was terrifying. For a Jew, the terror could only be magnified with the free-floating anti-Semitism that flowed freely through the comments and threats. I get that.

This is why Judge Reinhart made the unprecedented decision yesterday to declare that the government had not met its standards for keeping the affidavit that underlays the decision the judge made to approve the search warrant from being exposed, despite the fact this action went against every other judicial decision made about revealing prosecution affidavits that expose the methods of investigation, the cooperation of witnesses and their identity, and all the other things that would be exposed and harmed by this action during an ongoing investigation, ruling the DOJ must turn over the redacted version by next Thursday at noon. The affidavit will remain sealed during any appeals, he said. Reinhart also unsealed more minor documents containing general information at the hearing.

The Justice Department argued that redacting the affidavit would leave no information of substance to release, and noted that the search itself and release of the warrant last week had created a volatile situation leading to death threats against FBI agents.

Judge Reinhart is acting out of fear. He thinks that if he acquiesces with the demands, if he does what he can, that the wolves will be appeased and he and his family will be saved. The good jurist is in desperate need of a history lecture by someone at his synagogue about the 2,000 year unremitting history of what has always happened to Jews who have tried to “throw the wolf a bone.” It never works. It always comes to a bad end.

It always ends with guys like the judge being given the last seat on the last train to Auschwitz. Every time.

When it comes to the Mar-A-Lago search, Donald Trump and his most fervent supporters will not be appeased by any “reasonable action” Judge Reinhart tries to take. There will never be “enough.”

There will be no point at which they acknowledge that any action by law enforcement authorities related to the court-approved search of Mar-A-Largo is legitimate.

The sooner we - and Judge Reinhart - accept this as a fundamental fact the better.

If this document is released, Trump and his supporters will seize on the redactions as “evidence” that the "real rationale" for the search is being covered up, that the entire process is irredeemably illegitimate.

Release of the affidavit won’t solve a key problem it appears the judge thinks it can solve: It can’t convince Trump supporters the process is legitimate, because Trump and his most influential propagandists will never allow its legitimacy, regardless.

This coming Thursday, the DOJ will offer a version redacted to deal with those dangers. But Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, points out that “MAGA people are making direct threats against anybody associated with this case, including the judge, the FBI agents and anyone providing information against Trump.”

The argument that the Washington Post and New York Time made that the judge should release of the affidavit on the grounds that the public needs to know the rationale for a search of such historic importance demonstrates that too often the Meeedeeeeyahhh IS the problem. In this case, they are too fucking stupid to recognize reality - the reality being that they are feeding a Fascist Monster that will never accept anything they do as legitimate because it is The Enemy. The sooner they see it as such the better, but don’t hold your breath so long as fascists like John Malone are in a position to tell CNN to “cover both sides” as he has done (With Brian Stelter being the Chosen Public Exemplar).

The media’s “healthy skepticism” is not the position Trump and his supporters are taking. They’re casting the search as conclusive proof of totalitarian oppression, making lurid comparisons to fascist regimes and developing nation dictatorships.

When the starting position is that any and all law enforcement activity related to Trump is inherently illegitimate, that the search by definition cannot have been justified by reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing, then everything works backward from there.

We’ve already seen this over and over again.

When federal agents searched Mar A Lardo operating partly on information shared by confidential witnesses around Trump, this was because the evidence they collected convinced Judge Reinhart of probable cause.

Trump supporters labeled this the act of totalitarian secret police.

When the warrant was released, it documented specific suspected crimes - violation of the Espionage Act and other statutes involving handling of government information. The search inventory revealed that highly sensitive documents had been recovered.

Trump’s supporters demanded release of the affidavit, even as his lawyers avoided official action toward that end (because Trump knows if all that comes out, he is revealed for the criminal he is).

Meanwhile, despite public release of the warrant, Trump’s propagandists intensified their claims that the FBI had declared war on Trump supporters.

They poured gas on the fire and were undaunted by intensifying violence against law enforcement.

As a result, if the affidavit is released with heavy redactions, the end point isn’t hard to predict. For Trump and the Thousand Year MAGA, the price of social peace will be a grant of absolute impunity to TrumP.

This comes at a time when Trump faces potential indictment for possible crimes related to efforts to steal the 2020 election, incitement of a violent assault on the government and possession of highly classified national security documents. Not to mention election fraud in Georgia and business fraud in New York city.

Meanwhile, Trump is gearing up another potential effort to overturn our political order, and he has converted the Republican Party into the Thousand Year MAGA.

The release of the affidavit is not appease Trump and his supporters in the least. He will do all he can to ensure that it only escalates their rage.

Judge Reinhart needs to look at the history of those who try to appease monsters.

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