If FBI goons can crucify a former president, no-one is safe: RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

This is how democracy ends. Or maybe, just maybe, how civil war starts.

After the surgically-embalmed octogenarian Nancy Pelosi jetted into Taiwan to proclaim America’s enduring commitment to freedom, back home FBI goons were staging a politically-motivated, prime-time raid on the home of her sworn enemy Donald Trump.

As events unfolded on live television, it was like watching one of those old conspiracy-theory movies, starring Robert Redford or Gene Hackman.

In the latest Hollywood-inspired version, Trump is this year’s Enemy of the State.

The FBI’s stormtrooper tactics at Bad Orange Man’s gaudy Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida, could have come straight from the playbook of the Chinese Communist Party.

Their risible excuse for this outrageous abuse of Trump’s privacy and civil rights was a warrant issued by a federal judge in search of classified documents allegedly taken by the former President when he was evicted from the White House, screaming and kicking about a stolen election.

But then again, that makes it sound like a big deal, rather than a technical breach of protocol.

And a warrant from a federal judge is easier to obtain than a rubbery 99-cent cheeseburger from a 24-hour gas station fast food outlet.

Whenever the Feds fancy kicking someone’s door down on the most spurious of grounds, there is always a tame judge happy to oblige.

These days, they don’t have to rouse some drunken jurist from his Jack Daniels-soaked pit in Gopher’s Gulch, somewhere in Middle America. They’ve got a judge in Washington D.C on speed dial, eager to do their bidding.

The Clintonian Democrats pull all the strings in Washington. The Feds, and the Justice Department, are their own private army. So it was no real surprise when shock troops from the nation’s capital swarmed into the reclaimed Mar-a-Lago swamp.

Missing documents were merely the pretext for a high-profile embarrassment of the ex-Commander-in-Chief.

After all, the FBI couldn’t have cared less when the ghastly Hillary Clinton – then Secretary of State and Democrat Presidential candidate – took a Black and Decker drill to 33,000 allegedly confidential emails on her own laptop.

If the Feds wanted sight of whatever The Donald kept on his iPad they could always have asked his lawyers.

Not that I imagine Trump has many secrets. He suffers from serious social media incontinence. Too much information, rather than too little. Lets it all hang out.

Nope, this was another shocking example of the process becoming the punishment. The intention was to portray Trump as guilty of something, anything – and divert attention away from Creepy Uncle Joe and his dodgy business dealings with nefarious foreign actors, via his druggy, whoring son Hunter.

The FBI couldn’t have cared less when the ghastly Hillary Clinton – then Secretary of State and Democrat Presidential candidate – took a Black and Decker drill to 33,000 allegedly confidential emails on her own laptop

The Dems are desperate to stop Trump running again, after polls showed him trouncing not just Biden but any other opponent. They want to shoo-in California ‘liberal’ Gavin Newsom, a toothy, vacuous left-wing poster boy who has let crime and illegal immigration rip in the once ‘Golden State’.

For the record, this isn’t a pro-Trump column. More than a year ago, I wrote that he should stand aside and give Florida’s impressive 42-year old Republican governor Ron DeSantis a free run at the White House.

Trump’s greatest quality was that he managed to annoy all the right people. Otherwise, he’s a megalomaniac fantasist.

The terrifying fact here is that if the Deep State can crucify a former President, then no-one is safe.

Curiously, if this ham-fisted raid was intended to destroy what was left of Trump’s credibility, it has backfired spectacularly.

As of today, it looks like Trump stands more chance of getting re-elected, not less.

Even those who are by no means Trump fans have been horrified by the over-reach of the FBI, the Justice Department and the Democrat Establishment.

Within about half an hour of the news breaking, the usual Make America Great Again suspects were picketing Mar-a-Lago.

The FBI’s stormtrooper tactics at Bad Orange Man’s gaudy Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida, could have come straight from the playbook of the Chinese Communist Party

Yet apart from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, currently in the throes of distancing themselves from Trump, the mainstream American media went out of their way to downplay the raid.

Hilariously, the absurdly left-wing CNN network yesterday led their main morning bulletin not on the Trump story, but on the news that prices in the shops were falling. Allegedly.

You couldn’t make it up.

Still, it helps the fantasy being peddled by the White House that America isn’t in recession, despite the economy going into freefall for the past two quarters.

The Democrats have adopted Meghan Markle’s interpretation of what amounts to the ‘truth’.

Look, none of this gives me any pleasure. As a Londoner, I’ve been in love with the United States since my first trip to Detroit as a teenager in 1969, the year of Woodstock and the Moon landings.

My immediate family – not me – moved to America more than 40 years ago. My sister Vivienne is a U.S citizen. I’m flying to Michigan in a few days’ time to conduct a Midsummer Memorial Service for my mum, who died in March.

I’ve always believed that America is the world’s last best hope. And despite what’s going on right now, I still cling to that belief. Otherwise, the game’s up and Putin and the Chinese have won.

Call me an optimist, but for as long as I can remember I’ve bought in to Ronald Reagan’s vision of the U.S as a shining city on a hill.

But having watched the raid on Mar-a-Lago unfold on TV last night, to borrow a phrase from Paul Simon…Michigan seems like a dream to me now.

American friends I’ve caught up with recently are deeply depressed about the state of their nation.

We can only hope that the bungled effort by the FBI to discredit Trump proves to be the high watermark of the Deep State/Blob conspiracy to undermine for ever democracy in the West (Above) Secret Service agents stand outside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida

I first came here when the embers of the Detroit race riots were still smoldering. But I can’t recall a time when this great nation was more divided. The good old boys in their pickup trucks who turned out in Palm Beach on Monday night are the tip of the iceberg.

Decent, patriotic folk, even those who can’t stand Trump, are disgusted at the horrifying anti-democratic antics of the Deep State.

Somehow America, like Britain, has spawned a political class which holds the people who pay their wages in utter contempt and are prepared to go to any lengths to destroy those who threatened their hegemony.

We can only hope that the bungled effort by the FBI to discredit Trump proves to be the high watermark of the Deep State/Blob conspiracy to undermine for ever democracy in the West.

For America, in particular, to heal, the future demands the retreat of the CCP-style Deep State and magnanimity on the behalf of Trump, who should accept that he has the Establishment rattled and then graciously withdraws from the fray in favour of someone like DeSantis. It’s the greatest service he could do his country.

Sadly, I’m not convinced that’s going to happen. But the alternative is civil war. And that’s too horrible to contemplate.