By Andrew Sullivan, Weekly Dish

We have begun to move past him. Don’t let the FBI take us back.

When I first heard about the FBI’s raid on Mar-A-Lago, I merely hoped that there was a very, very good reason for it, and that the feds found what they were looking for. Days later, none of us knows the answer to either of those questions.

Donald J. Trump knows, of course. But he won’t tell us — because appropriate official silence allows him to flood the zone with his own bullshit, gin up his fevered base, and burnish his case for returning to power as a triumphant victim of the Deep State (aka the rule of law). All I know is that he is a grotesque liar and will say anything if it wins him a few minutes of news-cycle attention.

But look: I have no idea why the former president seems to have insisted on keeping boxes of highly classified documents he received in office, and then refused to give them all back. I don’t know why he resisted a subpoena on what seems like a routine request. It looks fishy — but with Trump, it always looks fishy. He acts like a criminal even when he isn’t committing a crime. He has never accepted the legitimacy of any legal authority if it is targeting him, and literally cannot submit willingly to it without some kind of psychic break. He could be guilty, but he could also be innocent; or guilty of something not-so-bad.

Equally, I have no idea why the FBI really had no option but to do this — given its huge political risks. And it seems perfectly possible to me that the US government’s fanatical protection of its own secrets has led to another stupid overreach by clueless prosecutors.

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