Legal Tangle

   There are increasing signs that total Trumpian loyalty to whatever the man has ever said or done is being questioned and even doubted by his loyalist supporters.
   This is brought on by events before, during and after the raid on the ex-president's Mar-a-Lago residence to retrieve top secret documents that he should not have kept and brought with him when he left the White House and refused to hand them over despite repeated requests by government officials. These requests were either denied, ignored or only partially answered over a period of more than a year, according to published reports and court appearances.
   Many of his more devoted followers attack the critics (verbally, for now) alleging that he is in fact entitled to keep anything and everything that was brought to him when he was president.
   This despite a federal law specifying that documents, especially those marked secret, remain government property. But the ex-president seems to believe that whatever was presented to him while he was in office became his personal stuff.
   Numerous court rulings have denied that, and told him to give it back. But after several requests, followed by court orders telling him to return the documents, it became clear that he had not handed over everything.
   Therefore, after a year of requesting, demanding, and court decisions endorsing that position, government officials, including the FBI and the CIA as well as library officials, sought a search warrant. This was duly executed, after the officials notified the Secret Service that they were coming to the Mar-a-Lago estate to collect the stuff that did not belong there.
   However, the ex-president is still challenging the efforts to retrieve the stuff. His continued and rising opposition to these efforts is eroding his support from many of his supporters, even those within Congress and the Republican Party.
   Separately, there is increasing discussion as to whether the ex-president can be prosecuted for any of his actions that would prove to be illegal. Or as some senior government and legal officials have said, "No one is above the law."