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Daniel Desrochers
·10 min read
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It wasn’t long after news broke that the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that some of the president’s most loyal defenders in Congress jumped to his defense.

In Kansas, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall called the search a “political hit job,” a “fishing expedition” and a “facade” and said he wanted to see the warrant. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri called for the impeachment of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the resignation of the Trump-appointed FBI director Christopher Wray and called for the search warrant to be published.

Missouri Republican U.S. Senate nominee Eric Schmitt, the state attorney general, said he wanted to take a “wrecking ball” to the Department of Justice, Rep. Billy Long, a Missouri Republican who hands out fake $45 bills with Trump’s face, called it “un-American.” Kansas Rep. Jake LaTurner said people deserved answers about why the raid took place.

The Justice Department is giving them their wish. Garland, in a press conference where he said he personally authorized the search, said the Justice Department filed a motion to unseal the search warrant and the receipt. Those documents will give insight to what, exactly, the FBI was searching for at Mar-a-Lago.

After the Washington Post reported that the FBI was looking for classified documents relating to nuclear weapons, Trump issued a statement around midnight, saying he would not oppose the release of the documents.

Earlier this week, I was particularly curious about what former U.S. Attorney John Wood had to say about it. Wood, a Republican running as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, is no Trump loyalist. He worked as an investigative counsel on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. He spent the past year investigating Trump’s role in the insurrection and is a lawyer with some familiarity of how the Justice Department carries out its own investigations.

He said he was curious about what they were looking for — was it just classified documents or did their scope expand beyond that — but he said finding out will likely involve something difficult to find in partisan politics: patience.

“The nature of criminal investigations is often they have to be done in ways that are not transparent, because they don’t want to give away too much information about their investigation,” Wood said before Garland announced the Justice Department would move to unseal the records. “And so I understand why the Justice Department has not made everything public about exactly what they’re doing, because sometimes that can undermine an investigation.”

Wood said he believes Garland should appoint a special prosecutor to look into Trump in an attempt to depoliticize any investigation into the former president. Garland’s boss is President Joe Biden and it appears possible that Biden and Trump will face off again for the presidency in 2024.

Any effort to depoliticize the situation may be a pipe dream. Any investigation into Trump — be it whether his company obeyed tax laws, his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, his effort to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election or whether he mishandled classified documents — is immediately cast by Trump and his allies as a political witch hunt, where the former president is the victim of his political enemies.

“The most loyal Trump fans, and I would include Eric Schmidt in this, their response is ‘Trump is a victim,’” Wood said. “But Trump is subject to the laws of the United States like everybody else. And if he did something wrong, if he violated federal law, he’s going to be investigated like anybody else would.”

The victim narrative is powerful among Trump’s base, a group that is skeptical about institutions like the Justice Department, the FBI or mainstream media outlets. In the immediate aftermath of the raid, some of Trump’s supporters were ratcheting up their rhetoric and calling for violence.

On Thursday, an armed man in a bulletproof vest tried to break into the FBI field office in Cincinnati with a nail gun and exchanged gunfire with members of law enforcement after fleeing the site. The man appeared to post on social media about wanting to kill FBI agents after Mar-a-Lago was searched. He was killed in a standoff with police.

Garland, responding to the recent threats against the Justice Department and FBI said he will not stand by while their integrity is attacked.

“The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated, patriotic public servants,” he said. “Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism, and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our civil rights. They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves. I am honored to work alongside them.”

More from Missouri

Missourians this November will vote on whether to legalize recreational marijuana in the state, four years after medicinal marijuana was legalized by a ballot measure. But the vote could add language supported by the established medical marijuana industry directly into the constitution that critics say established a state-sanctioned monopoly, making it hard for new businesses to break into the market.

Here are headlines from across the state:

And across Kansas

The ballot measure to eliminate the right to an abortion from the Kansas constitution failed unexpectedly in rural counties that haven’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson. Rural Kansas is more than a conservative monolith and many residents are naturally suspicious of government power, which amendment opponents spoke to by warning of mandates and encroachments on freedom.

The latest from Kansas City

In Kansas City …

Have a news tip? Send it along to ddesrochers@kcstar.com

Odds and ends

Lenny Dykstra

Kansas City Star politics editor Bryan Lowry is a big Philadelphia sports fan, so it caught his eye when he saw that former Phillie Lenny Dykstra was praising Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Twitter — and when Schmitt was retweeting that praise.

Dykstra was praising a letter Schmitt wrote to the FBI criticizing their decision to audit the concealed carry permits of a local Missouri police department. He quoted Schmitt’s letter saying “In light of all these facts, Missourians have concluded that the FBI leadership in Washington, D.C. has been weaponized for political gain” and attributed it to O.G.A.G. Schmitt (I believe that means “original gangster attorney general” because, that’s what O.G. stands for).

Of course, Dykstra has had his own run-ins with the law. He’s been convicted of bankruptcy fraud, concealment of assets and money laundering. He pleaded guilty to grand theft auto charges. He has been accused of sexual harassment of a 17-year-old girl who worked at a car wash, paying a female escort with a bad check, sexually assaulting his housekeeper and indecent exposure. In 2018, he was indicted by a grand jury in New Jersey for possession of cocaine, methamphetamine and making terroristic threats.

I am told that Dykstra is not Lowry’s favorite member of the 1993 Phillies. Instead it is John Kruk (Dykstra once crashed into a tree after driving home drunk from Kruk’s birthday party). My favorite member of the ‘93 Phillies is a little more embarrassing.

PACT Act

President Joe Biden signed a bill this week that would expand health benefits to veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits while serving overseas. The bill was pushed by Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican who had worked with veterans and their families to get agreement between Democrats, Republicans and the Biden administration.

Republican Rep. Jake LaTurner of Kansas put out a tweet this week saying he was proud to see the bill become law and congratulating Moran. In the Tweet, he said he supported the law. His Democratic opponent, Patrick Schmidt (too many Schmi(d)(t)ts) saw the Tweet and sent out one of his own claiming LaTurner voted against the bill.

The way Congress moves bills is very confusing.

LaTurner did, in fact, vote against a House bill that was called the Honoring our PACT Act. But that version of the bill was drafted by House Democrats and didn’t have support in the Senate. Moran and Tester rewrote the bill and passed their version through the Senate for the House to approve of the changes.

There were technical difficulties with the senate version of that bill. So the House took a different bill, amended it with the Senate language and passed it. LaTurner voted in favor of that version. The Senate then had to agree to the House’s changes, which they eventually did on Aug. 2, and Biden signed it into law this week.

So while LaTurner voted against a version of the toxic burn pit bill, he supported the version that eventually became law.

Pompeo

Former Secretary of State (and Representative from Kansas) Mike Pompeo testified with the House January 6th Committee behind closed doors. In the aftermath of the attack, Pompeo is reported to have talked to other cabinet secretaries about invoking the 25th amendment to remove Trump from power.

We don’t know what he said to the committee — if he said anything at all — but it’s likely video of some of his testimony will emerge when the committee next holds a public meeting. Already, the committee has mentioned the fact that the cabinet secretaries were seriously discussing whether to remove the president from office, even though they never took the drastic step.

Instead several Trump officials resigned in the aftermath of the attack, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (the wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) and Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger.

Happy Friday

Read this story about how Stephen Sondheim attempted a trial marriage with Mary Rogers after his therapist told him he should at least try to have a relationship with a woman. Have some Sangria. I love Carly Rae Jepson’s new song.

Enjoy your weekend.

Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent
Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent

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