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Are things going right or wrong for Donald Trump?

Yesterday, the FBI raided Donald Trump's home in Florida – a heavy-handed move that has put new energy into his base of true believers and radical populists.

Or was it just the latest minor bloodletting in his slow political death by a thousand cuts?

Another example of that came when a federal appeals court in DC ruled that the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Congressman Richard Neal, can obtain Donald Trump's personal tax records from the IRS.

Mr Trump has resisted making them public for years - and he can still appeal this appeal court ruling.

And the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US State Capitol is meeting behind closed doors with Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former Secretary of State, who had reportedly discussed with other cabinet officials removing Mr Trump from office after the attack on the Capitol.

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The committee has also taken possession of mobile phone messages from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who played a big role in publicising the 6 January 2021 rally, and was present on the day: his links with rally organisers and paramilitaries in the crowd that stormed the building are of great interest to the committee.

The raid is another illustration of the network of investigations that are slowly tightening around Donald Trump.

They include not just the January 6th Committee, but more seriously include the Department of Justice investigation and Grand Jury hearings investigating efforts to overturn the result of the presidential election through the so-called "fake electors" tactic, and a criminal case being prosecuted in the State of Georgia into allegations that the former president tried to persuade State officials to overturn the result of the election in that state.

There is also a stalled criminal investigation in New York into Mr Trump’s business dealings before he became president and a very active civil prosecution by the New York Attorney General of the same allegations of fabricated financial statements to obtain mortgages on property developments.

Mr Trump and his organisation have denied all allegations of wrongdoing and there is the inquiry by the House Oversight Committee into documents which Mr Trump removed from the White House on his departure from office, which belong in the National Archive to preserve the historic record.

It is in connection with that inquiry and the strained relations between Mr Trump and the National Archive, that yesterday’s FBI raid was apparently carried out.

Local law enforcement officers in front of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort today

The warrant by a federal judge is sealed, so reporters cannot find out what the FBI was looking for, or why they felt it necessary to get a search warrant.

Several legal experts, led by well-known law professor Alan Dershowitz, say the National Archive could have sought a subpoena, compelling Mr Trump to hand over the disputed documents by first thing today, or else face an FBI raid.

Mr Trump was in the Trump Tower in New York, so could not have got down to Florida to frustrate the execution of the subpoena, he argued.

But the authorities went in and took documents (according to Trump’s own lawyers - after looking into the former president’s safe).

Its not the first time they have been to Mar-a-Lago over the documents issue.

A group of federal officials had visited Mar-a-Lago at the start of June to inspect the storage conditions of the documents which they were in negotiations with Mr Trump and his lawyers to recover.

Donald Trump said of the search 'nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before'

According to CNN, they briefly met Mr Trump himself, and were brought to the document storage area in the basement of the complex.

They later sent a letter ordering the room to be padlocked by the Trump aides.

So why come in now with a full-on raid? Just how important are these documents? Is it simply a case of Federal Agencies plodding their way through the rules and regulations – or is the fact of breaking new ground and getting a judge to sign a search warrant for the home of a former President of the United States a sign that there is a lot more to this than just a few documents that should have been in the Archives in Washington, not the archives in Mar-a-Lago?

In his statement last night, Mr Trump said of the search "nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before".

Which is true. But no other President has been involved in conduct like Mr Trump that have led to so many investigations by so many Federal and State Agencies. The whole situation is unprecedented, not just the raid by the FBI.

So what’s the possible upside for Donald Trump? It’s the energy jolt that this has given his movement.
A radical move by the Justice Department and this is a radical move, will have its counterpart in the radical populist movement that Mr Trump rode to the White House in 2016.

With a new burst of energy, that populist revolt may be re-energised to such an extent that it can overcome the negative narrative that the January 6th Committee has been dishing out in prime-time TV installments to the American public.

In the battle of narratives, there is still plenty of life in the darkly negative worldview that delivered Donald Trump the White House in 2016.

For the conspiratorially minded, the very fact that the FBI executed a search warrant from a federal judge is proof that the deep state does not want Mr Trump to run again and will do almost anything to stop him.
For some, this narrative is more powerful that the facts reported by the January 6th Committee.

All summer, political observers have been expecting two things to happen – one was the Department of Justice bringing charges against Donald Trump.

The other was Donald Trump announcing his candidacy for the 2024 Presidential election.

As the net tightened around him, the betting was leaning towards Mr Trump declaring his candidacy – if for no other reason than it would raise the stakes considerably for an attorney general considering whether or not to bring charges.

It would also raise the bar for action by other federal agencies, most notably the FBI.

Now we have a halfway situation, in which the FBI has acted against a former president, but we are not at the point where charges may be brought.

And Mr Trump has not yet declared his candidacy. Over the past few weeks, opinion polls had been detecting a shift among Republican voters away from Donald Trump.

Last month, for the first time, two consecutive polls put Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the lead among Republican voters.

Not a solid trend, but a sign perhaps that the reporting by the January 6th Committee was causing more party members to question whether Mr Trump was the right choice for the future.

Trump supporters outside his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida

But Donald Trump has not been idly letting the Committee narrative seize the high ground: he has been very active in engagements across the country staking out his own version of events, a version that casts him as the victim of a vindictive "deep state" that is engaged in a campaign of "persecution" of Mr Trump aimed at blocking his route to the nomination.

His endorsement has been sought by a raft of candidates running for state positions and congress in the midterm elections in November, and he remains the dominant figure in the Republican party.

But not the only figure. There are plenty of Republicans who don’t want Mr Trump as their candidate but are keeping their head down for the moment.

The reason for that is Donald Trump’s supporters, who are loud and militant and who can make life miserable for those they deem enemies.

The Trump electoral base is now being fired up by the unique nature of the FBI raid.

The protestors outside Mar-a-Lago last night (and this morning) are the tip of the iceberg.

They want him to declare as a candidate soon. He probably wants to declare soon as well.

This raid gives him a good excuse to go early. Last week the Republican National Committee announced the Presidential nomination convention will take place in Milwaukee in the summer of 2024.

This raid is a turning point, a big moment in American politics. But we are still waiting for one or both of those expected events to take place: Donald Trump announcing he is running for president again and him being charged with something by the Attorney General.