The Fourth Amendment to our constitution, contained in the section known as the "Bill of Rights," protects citizens against governmental seizure of their persons, property, or personal effects. In fact, in order to serve a warrant, that warrant is supposed to be exact in its cause, its location, and its target. This is what protects us from the British warrant searches which simply said a Soldier could break into anyone's home and cite whatever they found as evidence to justify their search.
The idea, as the founders created it, was that in order to serve a warrant, you had to say EXACTLY which crime you believed had been committed, exactly where you thought the evidence was, and exactly whom you would be arresting for the violation. That is what makes the Mar-A-Lago raid's warrant so infuriating. It basically said, "We don not know exactly what crime was committed, but it might be this, and we need to search this whole area where the President lives, and we do not plan on arresting anyone, unless we find a crime."
This is the EXACT type of nonsense that Lord Cornwallis and King George were doing to the colonists in America. Our Government has become the oppressor.
Now, if the warrant had said, "We believe the Donald J. Trump has violated the Espionage Act by keeping and communicating classified material to a foreign power, the area to be searched is in the offices of the President at the Mar-A-Lago Estate, and should evidence be found Donald J. Trump will be arrested," then you would at least have to say that the warrant met the requirements of the fourth amendment.
Yet that is NOT AT ALL what the warrant said. It basically was a carte blanche to seize whatever they wanted and to sort it all out later to see if a crime had been committed. If this is not a point blank violation of the Fourth Amendment, then the amendment itself is meaningless.
This is the same thing that could lead to confiscation of weapons. Just imagine the warrant text: "We imagine (Person X) could be unstable, and might commit a violent crime, so we propose to search the entire residence and property of (Personal Address), and will make an arrest if we find any crime has taken place."
The insane thing is that this is exactly what they did to Trump. How can anyone, liberal, conservative, left, or right, be ok with this?!?!
The only protection we have from Governmental overreach with its law enforcement is the guarantee of a protected space into which they may not come except in both rare and extreme circumstances where a Judge declares it necessary to prove a SPECIFIC crime.
So let us re-word the above to make it compliant:
"We believe that (Person-X) is guilty of armed & aggravated assault. We believe the weapon used, a 9MM handgun, to be at the premises of (Personal Address), and order that the living and storage spaces of said property be searched for said weapon. Should the weapon be found, (Person-X) will be arrested and charged with the crimes above stipulated."
Now, that obviously is not how you write out a warrant. One, I am not a judge, and two, this is a blog and not a legal letterhead. But the point is what matters, and it should communicate the point well enough to get it across.
This kind of government overreach should scare you.
If it does not, you need to do some deeper research into the government and its regular overreaches.
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