If you want to keep government documents you stole, put them in cardboard boxes with stuff you actually own. Then find a judge you nominated to the federal bench to make a ruling in your favor. It’s simple.

Legal experts are commenting on Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to grant a motion by the former president and full-time criminal to delay the FBI’s investigation of his theft of government property. The technical legal language they’re using includes “crazytown”, “lawless”, “unbelievable”, she should be “impeached”, “a special exception to the law just for FPOTUS”, “she gave him more than he was entitled to”, “she is micromanaging the Executive Branch”, her decision is “biased even in its presentation of the facts”, her “ruling would demolish future white collar criminal investigations”, “this dumbass ruling”, “friggin’ absurd” and “for fucks’ sake”. Presumably, the Department of Justice will appeal her ruling or, even better, arrest her.

David Roberts of the VOLTS podcast sees the bigger picture:

I’m not a legal analyst, but I hope everyone is taking note of a particular maneuver that this judge pulled — a very, very familiar maneuver from reactionaries. It goes like this: first the right wing propaganda networks spread a bunch of lies and lunatic conspiracy theories.

Then other right-wingers implement particular policies in response to the “appearance” of something shady. So this judge says [FPOTUS] deserves extraordinary, unprecedented latitude because of the “extraordinary circumstances” and the “swirling questions about bias.” But her fellow reactionaries were the only ones raising questions of bias! It’s a perfectly sealed feedback loop — the propagandists “raise questions” and then politicians and judges pass/implement laws based on all the questions that have been raised. An ouroboros of bullshit.

The most familiar version of this bullshit loop is in reference to voting law. Right wing propagandists have spent decades “raising questions” about voter fraud. Of course, the questions have answers. It’s all bullshit. There is no appreciable voting fraud. Nevertheless, red state after red state has passed restrictive voting laws based on these bad faith questions that have been raised. Real voting restrictions in response to fake voting fraud.

Human beings have a strong instinctive heuristic that says, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” If enough people are talking about X or “raising questions” about X, then the default presumption is that there *must be something fishy about X”. Right wing media is basically a machine designed to exploit that heuristic. What right-wingers have realized is that they can create smoke around literally anything. Then they can use that self-created smoke as evidence of fire and pass policy to address the fire [that doesn’t exist]. It’s a neat trick.

I don’t even think it’s some grand, conscious scheme. It’s just a natural outgrowth of reactionary psychology — always claiming victimhood; always demanding special treatment. I’m sure this judge sincerely believes the “raised questions” justify special treatment for Trump.

I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s more a case of ends justifying the means. In order to achieve total political, economic and cultural power — which they think they fully deserve — it’s acceptable to tell lies and ignore the law. Lately, however, there’s another motivation. Stay on the cult leader’s good side or risk serious, possibly fatal, retaliation.