If that’s the case, then of course evidence that Trump violated the Presidential Records Act of 1978 or another statute by bringing government property to Mar-a-Lago should have prompted the FBI to seek a search warrant. Any other response would be giving the former president special treatment and interfering with the impartial administration of justice. This is fast becoming the orthodox liberal defense of the Mar-a-Lago raid.

But despite its righteous pretenses, this mechanical view of justice is no panacea. If the Justice Department’s Mar-a-Lago decision aggravates partisan furies, it won’t be because Garland’s department is politicized in an overt, Trumpian sense.

On the contrary: It will be because it sees itself as so scrupulously and high-mindedly apolitical that it could not foresee — or else ignored — the consequences of the raid for the United States’s cycle of polarization. The explosive response was predictable, yet multiple news reports suggest that at least some officials thought executing a search warrant on a former president’s residence for the first time in history would somehow be a low-profile affair.