Once upon a time, there was a conservative writer whom I admired greatly, even as I disagreed with much of what he wrote. He thinks there are too many laws, that hate crime legislation is "virtue signaling," and that we're making too much of climate change. None of these are a part of my belief system, but they ae pretty much what you'd expect from a Conservative.

Agree with him or not, you could not deny that Will was thoughtful, nor could you consider him dumb. After all, the man has won a Pulitzer, holds a degree from Oxford, and has an earned Doctorate. While I retained the right to disagree with him, I did it with respect.

Until this morning.

Will's column in the AJC this morning is entitled, "Garland has a duty to explain the FBI raid." So far, so good, especially since Garland had already requested that the documents authorizing the search of Mar-a-Lago be unsealed by the judge and since Trump had a copy that he was free to release at any time. Will then goes on to note that the AG's position involves making judgments that are "inherently political," although he doesn't go so far as to say that the decision regarding the former president's residence was either political or influenced by politics. He just lets the inference hang there.

Then the column takes a peculiar turn, especially since Conservatives say that they are generally in favor of following the law. He wonders if crime should really be punished. So as not to misrepresent what Will seems to support, here are a few of the pertinent paragraphs.

"When the Clintons decamped from the White House in January 2001, they absconded with some furnishings that they were compelled to disgorge, without the FBI's swarming their home."

There is an amazing level of disingenuity here. First, Will is equating Top Secret documents and tables, chairs, and rugs. Secondly, he's ignoring that, at the time the Clintons returned the furniture, the people in charge of worrying about such things were not sure whether the furniture and other gifts were White House Property or Clinton Property. Jim McDaniel, the National Park Service's liaison to the White House, said, "The property is being returned to government custody until such time that the issues can be resolved. It may well turn out that that property is rightly the personal property of the Clintons."

And then, of course, the biggest factor: the Clintons were told that they might have government property, so they immediately returned it. There was no need for the FBI to "swarm their home."

The Feds have been talking to Trump about the files for months, with unsatisfactory results. In fact, Trump's lawyers provided a document saying there were no more classified files at Mar-a-Lago. Trump's latest Tweets declare that they are his, and he wants them back.

Finally, there  is this slap in the face of Lady Liberty and Law and Order:

"Trump might have broken laws pertaining to presidential documents. So, cue those who believe that 'No person is above the law" is a thought that makes further thinking unnecessary. However, the punctilious enforcement of every law, no matter how complex the social context, is zombie governance by people spouting bromides to avoid making complex judgments."

When I read that, I almost shot my coffee out my nose. "Might have broken laws pertaining to presidential documents?" We know that twenty-five boxes of documents have already been hauled away from Mar-a-Lago. We have testimony that Trump ripped up presidential documents, flushed them, and possibly ate them. We know that White House employees followed him around, picking up pieces of official documents and taping them back together. There is, Mr. Will, no doubt that Donald Trump broke the laws pertaining to presidential documents. But that's not what this is about.

This is about sensitive national security documents, some of them classified at the highest levels, being shipped to a non-secure site, perhaps for the reading pleasure of Trump's well-heeled guests. We have no way of knowing who was given access to the documents, nor do we know to whom they pledged allegiance. All we know for sure is that these documents were not where they were supposed to be, nor were they as secure as they were supposed to be.

The reasons for the search included in the application for the search warrant were: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, and criminal handling of government records. Taken together or separately, they add up to much more than what Mr. Will tries to toss off as Trump ignoring some picky regulations regarding presidential documents.

I would suggest to Mr. Will that, instead of demanding that Attorney General Garland justify his actions, he should demand that Trump justify his taking of classified materials and lying about having them, his resistance to returning them when asked to, and why he is so bent on keeping them. Garland followed the law. I think that it's time that Trump follows Garland's example.