If I Were Andrew Cuomo, I Would Simply Not Try To Insert Myself Into the Donald Trump FBI Investigation

After Donald Trump announced to the world that the FBI had raided his home in search of missing classified documents, former disgraced New York governor Andrew Cuomo decided that the best thing he could do is needlessly try to insert himself into the conversation.

“DOJ must immediately explain the reason for its raid & it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation & legitimacy of January 6 investigations,” Cuomo tweeted Tuesday morning.

First of all, I don’t know why Cuomo thinks anyone cares what he has to say about the matter. He’s no longer a working politician, and though he has teased the idea of returning to public life, that hasn’t happened yet. For now, he’s just some guy. And while “some guy” is allowed to have an opinion on current events, he’s talking like he has some authority over the matter, which he absolutely does not.

Second, the DOJ does not have to explain the raid. They already explained it to a judge, who found the reasons valid enough to sign off on a search warrant. The DOJ and the FBI did not announce that the raid was happening or had happened, they have not politicized the event publicly—Trump did that. And Trump would now have a copy of their warrant so he could also easily explain why the FBI was there.

We also already know that some of the documents Trump was previously found to have taken from the White House are so highly classified that they cannot even be described without violating national security protocol. That doesn’t sound very “inconsequential.”

But also, if I were Andrew Cuomo (and boy am I glad I’m not), I would not choose to insert myself into a conversation about ongoing investigations into former prominent politicians. I would not remind everyone that I love to yell about those investigations being “political” and invalid despite having no evidence to support my claims. If I were Andrew Cuomo, I would try to remember that silence is also an option. Because the minute he decides to weigh in on these subjects, a whole lot of people are there to remind him just how badly he shouldn’t.

I know you aren’t opening your mouth right now.

— roxane gay (@rgay) August 9, 2022

(image: Carlo Allegri-Pool/Getty Images)