08-09-2022, 11:14 PM
Well, the FBI snooped around in Mar-a-Lago. It knows the usual hiding places for damning stuff. The worst would be damning connections.
Should the FBI be seeking something else and find something clearly criminal not enumerated in the warrant -- for a drug offender, that might include tools of such crimes as a firearm and a mask characteristic of armed robbers -- then that itself is fair game. If not drugs, something like child pornography that is itself illegal would also become fair game for an investigation.
The FBI may not be a secret police, but it is certainly secretive. It collects evidence and keeps quiet about it until giving it up for use by prosecutors -- if it can so be used. Remember -- the FBI may not be a secret police, but it is even more effective than the Gestapo or the KGB ever were. You certainly do not want it snooping around. It can get innocent people to talk. They are easy. They will talk just to avoid incrimination and might end up incriminating a likely offender who isn't so likable.
Should the FBI be seeking something else and find something clearly criminal not enumerated in the warrant -- for a drug offender, that might include tools of such crimes as a firearm and a mask characteristic of armed robbers -- then that itself is fair game. If not drugs, something like child pornography that is itself illegal would also become fair game for an investigation.
The FBI may not be a secret police, but it is certainly secretive. It collects evidence and keeps quiet about it until giving it up for use by prosecutors -- if it can so be used. Remember -- the FBI may not be a secret police, but it is even more effective than the Gestapo or the KGB ever were. You certainly do not want it snooping around. It can get innocent people to talk. They are easy. They will talk just to avoid incrimination and might end up incriminating a likely offender who isn't so likable.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.