Among conservatives, there's been much speculation about the Department of Justice's justification for the Mar-a-Lago raid.  Of course, the truth will emerge only if the DOJ's petition for the search warrant is made public.  On the left, however, they're uninterested in the actual petition.  They know what Trump's done wrong and are already auditioning the executioner.  This post will take you on a little tour of the leftist fever swamp's response to the raid.

The fever swamp's denizens aren't just Antifa types living in their parents' basements.  Take historian Michael Beschloss, who was in the White House just a few days ago, and retired Air Force general Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA and the CIA.  Those are impressive credentials, but they are responsible for this post-raid piece of garbage intimating that Trump should be executed for espionage:

Sounds about right. https://t.co/hJCjxhN2BQ

— Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) August 12, 2022

At the Atlantic, a writer claims that Trump's plenary powers over national security matters still prevent him from declassifying nuclear secrets, because of a law, so he committed a criminal act.

Likewise, in the Omaha World-Herald, two members of the Loyola faculty "explain" how Trump could have violated the Espionage Act even if he isn't a spy.  It's rife with errors.  They baldly speculate about several scenarios in which Trump might have failed to formally declassify the documents based on technicalities, such as failing to remove markings from all pages.  They seem not to understand that the president can declassify documents any way he wants, including leaving markings, because that's part of his plenary constitutional authority.  No procedural rules are needed. 

They make the ludicrous claim that, even if information is declassified, the president might still be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for merely having moved "national defense information."  Leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that this would make the Hillary Clinton matter seem like the mother of all double-standards, these writers ignore the difference between people who fall within Congress's purview (ordinary citizens, federal employees, people in Congress) and the president of the United States.  Let me say it again: "plenary power."

Ultimately, no matter how much Democrats hate it, when the American people elect a president, they assign to him the ultimate power to make all national security decisions.  Administrative agencies and congressional acts cannot override that.

Image: A member of the tinfoil hat brigade (edited) by Morton devonshire.  CC BY-SA 3.0.

My favorite swamp creature, though, is alterego55, who wrote a post on Daily Kos's community forum.  He garnered 736 stars and ended up on the Facebook page of a high school classmate, which is how I found him.  The title alone is a conspiracy theorist's dream: "The reason Trump has appropriated US classified documents is far more sinister than you might think."

Alterego55 walks us through the "Trump was always a bad seed" narrative, much of which has that Russia hoax flair to it.  We get Trump's teenage escapades (hence the military school); his work with Roy Cohn; the fact that Trump Management was targeted in 1973 for violating the Fair Housing Act (Trump asserts that the Justice Department singled out the business and extorted a settlement); and Russia, Russia, Russia, including claims that Trump was in bed with Russian oligarchs.

As to those last claims, alterego55 seems to have confused Trump with Hunter Biden.  With Hunter, of course, we have the evidence of his own hard drive.  With Trump, all alterego55 has are imaginary dots and invisible lines.

It's alterego55's conclusion, though, that is, in its own wacky way, completely magnificent.  The fact that Trump came through the Mueller investigation, two impeachments, and multiple witch hunts completely clean is irrelevant.  Alterego55 is certain that Trump, carrying those U.S. secrets, plans to leave America for permanent residency in Russia or Saudi Arabia, where he will make bank selling those same secrets to Putin or Mohammed bin Salman:

When things start getting dicey, Trump will board a helicopter to a Russian or Saudi yacht sitting offshore outside US territorial waters. From there, he will self-exile to Moscow or Riyadh.  Putin or MBS will gladly help take care of Trump's basic needs.

TO REGAIN SOME MINIMAL WEALTH, TRUMP WILL SELL U.S. SECRETS
TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER, WHICH MOST LIKELY WOULD BE PUTIN, MBS, OR XI. THAT'S WHY HE NEEDED SUCH A LARGE CACHE OF U.S. SECRET DOCUMENTS.

WE NEED TO GET THE AIR NATIONAL GUARD PATROLLING THE EAST COAST ASAP, FROM NYC TO PALM BEACH, SO THEY'RE READY TO INTERCEPT TRUMP'S HELICOPTER, AND KEEP HIM FROM REACHING A RUSSIAN OR SAUDI YACHT TO SELF-EXILE TO MOSCOW OR RIYADH.

This theory would certainly explain why the FBI stole Trump's passports.  Apparently, they've been reading alterego55's post.

We live in mad, bad, dangerous times.  Please don't do anything stupid.  Biden's administration is poised to justify a crackdown that will make its response to January 6 look like a small-scale trial run.  Fight for liberty, but do it by staying within the lines of the law and the Constitution because, otherwise, the swamp creatures will be waiting for you.