The Justice Department Was Dangerous Before Trump. It's Out of Control Now

The recent Trump investigation is just the latest chapter of a long-brewing civil liberties nightmare. Part 1 of a series.

Clockwise from top left: The “Blind Sheikh,” attorney Lynne Stewart, singing Attorney General John Ashcroft, Enron defendant Ken Lay

On Monday, August 8, Justice Department officials spent nine hours raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of Donald Trump, carrying out 12 boxes of material. When criticism ensued, FBI spokespeople in wounded tones insisted the press eschew the harsh term “raid,” and use “execution of a search warrant” instead. 

“Agents don’t like the word ‘raid,’ they don’t like it,” complained former assistant FBI counterintelligence director turned MSNBC analyst Frank Figliuzzi. He added with unintentional irony: “It sounds like it’s some sort of extrajudicial, non-legal thing.”

But it was a raid, as the surprisingly enormous number of people who’ve been on the business end of such actions since 9/11 will report. The state more and more now avails itself of a procedural trick that would have horrified everyone from Jefferson to to Potter Stewart to Thurgood Marshall. Investigating,…