The FBI and DOJ and SDNY wouldn't possibly authorize a raid on the president's lawyer unless they had evidence of a crime beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt.
That's not just the message from the media. Plenty of analysts on the right have been putting out the message. The experts tell us that there's no way something like this would have been authorized otherwise.
Maybe.
But let's not fall into the fallacy of assuming that the old rules apply. They don't.
If you think that the key players wouldn't authorize a major move against Trump without solid evidence, let's recall that the Steele Dossier was used to justify a FISA warrant. And we were told endlessly about the rigorous process there too.
But we're also told that Team Mueller doesn't leak even though the media is full of leaks coming from his people.
Should some of the same people who treated the Steele Dossier as a serious piece of evidence get the benefit of the doubt when targeting Trump? Sure, last time they had stuff that read like it was written by a deranged third grader. But this time they're bound to have the real stuff. Otherwise they wouldn't go this far? Would they.
But as Obama told Comey when the former asked him, "What do we have?""A banana republic if we can keep it."