After Fox News people went ballistic, comparing the FBI to the KGB because they showed up in ordinary clothing and calmly conducted a search at Mar-A-Lago, the Daily Show had fun, posting clips of Fox News people from 2016 demanding that the FBI should do the same to Hillary Clinton .

Meanwhile:

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said the FBI seized his phone Tuesday morning, a day after federal agents raided former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort and home, Mar-A-Lago.

Perry told Fox News he was traveling with his family when he was approached by three FBI agents with a warrant for his device.

“They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish,” the lawmaker said in a statement. “I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress.”

Perry added that his phone contained information about his legislative and political activities and personal conversations with friends and family.

“None of this is the government’s business,” he said.

The lawmaker’s office did not reply to a request for comment.

Perry was one of the lawmakers that Cassidy Hutchinson testified to the January 6th Committee about, saying he’d had sought a pardon for his efforts to steal the 2020 election. He called the phone seizure ‘banana republic tactics’. The FBI has also searched the home of former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and seized the phone of Trump election attorney John Eastman.

It’s still not clear what the DOJ was seeking in the search of Trump’s home. President Biden said he found out about it via the news, like everyone else has. AG Garland has not briefed anyone on these searches and has maintained public silence, consistent with standard DOJ practice with an ongoing investigation.

Ex-President Trump, after giving a deposition today in NY’s investigation into his past business practices in that state, announced he’d invoked his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination, again claiming everything going on was a political witchhunt without any evidence to support that claim. His statement:

It’s still unknown what the FBI search was about though his role in the insurrection, his records destruction, the possibility that he retained documents that could compromise national security and his efforts to tamper with state election results are the four possibilities most legal analysts cite. Trump’s lawyer today said the FBI seized about a dozen boxes from Mar-A-Lago Monday.

Eric Trump said it was related to the records sought by the National Archives.

Every investigation of Trump’s actions - by Congress, NY and GA at least - are being conducted via standard procedures that would be used in an investigation of any American. Though there’s always the potential that an investigator at the DA level or a state AG or the US AG could make a mistake, in such a high profile case, I’d expect them to be extraordinarily careful not to err, to avoid any claims that politics was the motive and to avoid errors that could be challenged in court.

And it’s worth noting again that the head of the FBI was appointed by and previously lauded by Trump. And the evidence in the GA case is being presented to a special grand jury, so it’s not a solo effort by a partisan DA.

More than one elected Republican has said words to this effect: “if they can do this to a former president, imagine what they can do to you.” Some hyperbolic ninnies called them Nazi tactics.

Really? For those who lived through the 1960s, we’re very aware of what the FBI can do to us. Not only were peaceful antiwar protesters harassed, spied on, and jailed - often on bogus charges - but numerous Black Panthers were murdered in cold blood. Leaders of the civil rights movement were also tailed and jailed. There is no doubt that under past FBI heads like J. Edgar Hoover, one’s politics or race or sex life could get you imprisoned.

And while oversight of the FBI and the DOJ has improved in the half century since, we know any major protest activity can draw scrutiny and investigations from the FBI down to the tiniest local police department. Most people know fully well what can be done to us. And most think it’s fine that the FBI can do it to CEOs, rich lawyers, judges and politicians at all levels. We don’t need to imagine. We only need to remember. So those diversionary words carry no weight at all.

Trump, true to form, used the search and a lie to raise money:

Trump’s campaign-in-waiting blasted appeals to his fundraising lists almost immediately after the search on Monday — saying in one fundraising request that his “beautiful home” had been “raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents” and writing in a text blast to his supporters that “Dems broke into the home of Pres Trump.”

And there’s this:

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, excoriated Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia for demanding that the FBI be defunded following its Monday raid of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

After Greene tweeted "DEFUND THE FBI!" in an apparent reaction to the news on Monday night, Steele responded in a quote tweet that, "Trump failed to return classified docs requested by the National Archives. A federal judge issued a search warrant for probable cause of a crime. This is not some rando move by the FBI so you shitforbrains Republicans calling for 'defunding the FBI' for once try to be less stupid."

The response from her office?

Reacting to the former RNC chairman's tweet in a comment to Insider, Greene spokesperson Nick Dyer said, "Who the hell is Michael Steele?"

Steele served as the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland from 2003-2007. Then he chaired GOPAC for 2 years, which trained and supported Republicans in state and local elections. Then he was the chairman of the GOP from 2009-2011.

But it’s understandable that Greene and the people she hires represent the Know Nothings so well.

Fencepost, meet Box of Rocks.

Rolling Stone reported this yesterday:

Behind closed doors this summer, Donald Trump and his advisers have been narrowing the shortlist of criminal defense attorneys he’d need to take on the Justice Department. The former president has had preliminary conversations with Tim Parlatore, a lawyer best known for successfully representing an accused war criminal, about possible legal strategies should the department escalate its probe or hit Trump with charges, two people with knowledge of the matter and a third source briefed on it tell Rolling Stone.

Trump’s conversations with Parlatore and other newly retained lawyers are part of his broader push to assemble yet another new legal team, both for his current legal woes and for any future ones coming from the FBI and Biden-era DOJ. Throughout the summer, Trump has been quizzing confidants on what they think of specific criminal defense lawyers, throwing out a number of names both big and obscure. In other words, as one Trump advisor describes it, the ex-president is conducting the “Apprentice: Avoid-Federal-Prison Edition.”

But maybe you prefer learning how far some states will go to get info about women seeking an abortion. Or how far social media sites are going to protect that data from the legal authorities.

The fetus was more than 20 weeks old, which is the limit Nebraska has imposed. That’s 4 months and 18 days, several weeks before a fetus reaches viability where it can survive out of the womb with assistance. But in this case, the fetus was at 23 weeks along, or 5 months and 1 week, so it is possible with major medical support, that the fetus might have survived. ‘Might have’.

At 24 weeks, between 42% and 69% can survive. The variance depends on the access to advanced medical care.

Via Wikipedia:

According to a Stanford University study on babies born in the most advanced US hospitals between 2013 and 2018, at 23 weeks, 55% of infants survive a preterm birth long enough to be discharged from the hospital, usually months later.[13] Most of these infants experienced some form of significant neurodevelopmental impairment, such as cerebral palsy.[13] Most were re-hospitalized for respiratory illnesses or other medical problems during the first two years of life.[13] Some used adaptive equipment such as walkers or feeding tubes, but most could feed themselves when they were 2 years old.[13] Most had typical vision and hearing.

From the first link:

Celeste and her mother were charged in July with allegedly removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body and concealing the death of another person after the Norfolk Police Department received a tip claiming Celeste had miscarried in April at 23 weeks of pregnancy and secretly buried the fetus with her mother's help. The case was first reported by the Lincoln Journal Star.

Her mother was charged for providing the abortion pills to Celeste, then helping to dispose of the dead fetus, plus lying about it when questioned.

So in addition to the intrusion of states in these decisions, anyone seeking an abortion needs to avoid discussing it on social media or via text messages. After all, by voiding Roe v. Wade, there is no longer any right to privacy anywhere, ever, at any time.

For anyone.

From 48 years ago, this seems apropos.

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