Republicans wanted everyone in prison – until the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago

Many members of the GOP are stunned that, in the United States, everyone is treated equally before the law and only real crimes, not made-up ones, are investigated by the FBI, writes Phil Thomas

There’s an old saying that the law should be enforced against our enemies – and interpreted for our friends. One rule for them (because they’re scoundrels and deserve everything that’s coming to them), another rule for us (because we’re misunderstood and persecuted and it’s not fair).

Little could illustrate that mentality better than the Republican reaction to the FBI search of former president Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Conservatives who have spent five years shrieking “Lock her up!” in the hope of having a political opponent jailed for something the FBI didn’t consider a criminal offence are now catastrophising about a communist police state following the legally-executed search of Trump’s Florida property in relation to a potentially serious crime.

(The FBI search related to boxes of highly classified documents that Trump – how can one put this – liberated from the American people on his way out of the White House. And the granting of a search warrant, which will have required a high legal bar and clearly carries intense political sensitivities, has raised suggestions there were fears he was planning to either destroy them — as was his habit in the White House, sometimes even flushing them down the toilet — or even allow them somehow to come into others’ possession.)

Hillary Clinton was far from the only political enemy Trump wanted locked up or investigated by the Justice Department. His other targets included Barack Obama (for treason, no less, which can carry the death penalty); ex-FBI figures James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok; deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein; billionaire democracy campaigner George Soros; ex-secretary of state John Kerry; and anyone who burns a flag or leaks information.

In a late-night Twitter rant in October 2020, Trump took aim at his attorney general Bill Barr for not following through on these threats, asking “Where are all the arrests?”

Hillary Clinton was far from the only political enemy Trump wanted locked up or investigated by the Justice Department. His other targets included Barack Obama (for treason, no less, which can carry the death penalty)

Later his anger had mounted to all-caps fury: “DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!”

It wasn’t just political enemies. Trump even suggested Snoop Dogg should have his stylish collar felt for pretending to shoot him in a music video.

Hunter Biden remains a key target for the Republicans. The emergence of his laptop shortly before the 2020 election has electrified the GOP, who are now howling for him – and perhaps his father Joe – to be incarcerated. Needless to say, it’s not yet clear that he has committed a specific crime beyond the drug use he had already spoken about publicly. It may turn out that he has. But for the time being, over-the-top innuendo will suffice.

Expect multiple congressional inquiries into Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” when the Republicans retake the House. We can be confident that the murky nature of the provenance and authenticity of the computer’s contents will not be the main focus.

Naturally, Trump’s allies were four-square behind him in wanting to sic law enforcement on to their political rivals – something that has come back to haunt them this week as they U-turn into howling rage at the very idea of a political figure being investigated.

As The Independent’s Alex Woodward wrote this week, it’s been a short journey for many Republicans from “lock her up” to “defund the FBI”.

Senior GOP figures like Mike Pence, Marco Rubio and Sarah Huckabee Sanders could hardly contain their glee when the FBI said – days before the 2016 election – that it was looking again at Clinton’s use of a private email server (the bureau later concluded no crime had been committed). Now, of course, when the Feds have Trump in their sights, it’s all an outrageous overreach of power that puts the US on the verge of a “third-world Marxist dictatorship”.

So – politics is full of unprincipled people? Shock, horror. It was ever thus. But at a time when some Trump supporters are grumbling darkly online about civil war, it’s worth pointing out the hypocrisy of people who appear stunned that, in the United States, everyone is treated equally before the law and that only real crimes, not made-up ones, are investigated by the FBI.

As for prosecuting former presidents, other democracies have done it and survived. France has done it twice in recent years, with Chirac and Sarkozy both falling foul of the law. Does the US really want to be seen as having a less robust democracy than the people Republicans mock as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”? Communist police state, or less tough than the French: quite the conundrum for conservatives.

Yours,

Phil Thomas

West coast editor (US)