The FBI continues to flail after its raid on Mar-a-Lago, ostensibly under the guise of protecting government records. On Monday evening, we learned that the bureau had leaked falsehoods about not seizing the former president’s passports. That contention was disproven after Donald Trump dropped an email proving they did so and were now offering to return them.

Over the last week, we’ve gone from DOJ claims of a justified, precise police action to the revelation that the warrant was basically a free-for-all, allowing the seizure of essentially anything. That’s led a lot of people, including myself, to speculate that the FBI agents were actually looking for materials related to January 6th.

What appears abundantly clear is that the raid was politically motivated and carried out in a way that ignored all precedent. I know I’m a broken record at this point, but one look at how Hillary Clinton was treated in comparison is all the evidence you need.

Now, Eric Trump is claiming to have a silver bullet from the raid: The surveillance footage.

.@EricTrump: we will be releasing the video surveillance footage when the time is right. pic.twitter.com/DjO2NwdVS7

— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) August 16, 2022

The DOJ subpoenaed the footage almost immediately, with government leaks appearing in the press claiming that they showed Trump’s associates moving boxes in and out of the storage room. What is that supposed to prove? The answer is nothing, but it certainly sounds sinister, right? And that’s really all that matters here, i.e. pushing the orange man bad narrative.

So does Trump have the surveillance footage, and is he waiting for “the right time” to release it? Here’s where I get a little skeptical. Anyone who has read my work long enough knows I’m a natural cynic, specifically when it comes to politics. And while I’m all for Trump exposing the partisan hacks in the government, I’m not much for the neverending teases at this point.

For example, Kash Patel recently claimed that the documents at Mar-a-Lago included materials proving government corruption regarding the Russian collusion hoax. If that’s true, though, why in the world would Trump have not already released them? He’s long said he wanted everything declassified and given to the public immediately. It just doesn’t make sense to me, or at the very least, it’s a bad way to go about things considering how many people have been waiting for that evidence.

In regards to this surveillance video, if it were released, it’s an open question of how useful it would be. We know FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago, and we know they went so far as to rifle through Melania Trump’s wardrobe. Seeing that happen on video might bring a fresh round of disapproval, but the fundamentals would remain the same. The warrant was technically signed and executed legally. The problem remains with the underlying probable cause, which the DOJ leadership is fighting to keep secret because they are corrupt.

The last concern is whether it is even legal to release the footage if it’s under subpoena. In a prior article, I wrote that it wasn’t based on an analysis from someone I trust. But perhaps there’s some kind of loophole that’s being missed?

Regardless, and perhaps I’m being too much of a downer here, but I just don’t think Trump can afford to keep playing footsie with federal law enforcement. The risk is real and there is clearly no grand strategy going on behind the scenes in Trump-world. The former president is reacting, which is to be expected when the DOJ executes an unprecedented abuse of power. If the footage exists and shows some kind of wrongdoing by the FBI, it needs to have been released yesterday. And if Trump had Russia-hoax documents at Mar-a-Lago, those needed to have been released years ago. Let’s hope we see both soon. Show me the money.