THREAD: “What’s the difference between this and Watergate?” Donald Trump raged in a statement Monday night after FBI agents.
— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) August 8, 2022
Well, as a Watergate and FBI historian, four things stand out to me:
1) The idea the FBI launched a raid on a former president would have been approved and monitored at the highest level of the Justice Department; hard to even imagine how high the bar of probable cause must've been for the Bureau to initiate such a politically sensitive search....
— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) August 8, 2022
2) A search warrant means an independent federal judge ALSO signed off on the probable cause and, independently, believes evidence there was likely a crime committed AND that more evidence would be found at Mar-a-Lago. That's huge too.
— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) August 8, 2022
3) The fact the search apparently didn't leak until basically when word came from Donald Trump himself shows the FBI and the Justice Department conducted this search by the book and a high degree of integrity. No leaks? Impressive. Surely only a small team knew inside DOJ....
— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) August 8, 2022
4) Taken together, this is one of the most significant, sensitive, and politically explosive actions the US Justice Department and FBI has ever taken—one of a tiny handful of times it's ever investigated a president.
— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) August 8, 2022
Bottom line: The FBI & DOJ must've known they had the goods.
There's a good Wikipedia article, to which I contributed: FBI search of Mar-a-Lago
Also, a retrospective on Washington Post articles on the background of this topic, published before the August 8, 2022 search.
A 🧵 on the @washingtonpost's groundbreaking coverage of Trump's mishandling of documents by @JaxAlemany @jdawsey1 @thamburger @AshleyRParker @DevlinBarrett @mattzap that helped lead us to where we are today:
— Dan Eggen (@DanEggenWPost) August 9, 2022
"‘He never stopped ripping things up’: Inside Trump’s relentless document destruction habits" (Feb 5, 2022)
"National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago" (Feb 7, 2022)
"Some Trump records taken to Mar-a-Lago clearly marked as classified, including documents at ‘top secret’ level" (Feb 10, 2022)
"15 boxes: Inside the long, strange trip of Trump’s classified records" (Feb 12, 2022)
"Some records taken by Trump are so sensitive they may not be described in public" (Feb 25, 2022)
"Grand jury used in probe of classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago" (May 12, 2022)
THREAD. The fact that Trump never formally declassified anything, and also never raised it to DOJ, but is asserting it (unofficially) now, is actually an incredibly damning admission by Trump. That's because it means that *he wanted these secrets to still have value*
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) August 31, 2022
Also, as discussed on "All In with Chris Hayes" on August 31: Trump's lawyers claimed they'd turned in all the documents in response to prior government requests. But there were more documents. Did lawyers like Christina Bobb know? Former federal prosecutor Cynthia Alksne explained her theory: "Either she knew what she was saying was a lie, at which point she's a co-defendant, and if she didn't know, she's a witness." In other words, the lawyer, if questioned directly, would have to say either I lied for my client or My client lied all by himself. Therefore, they shouldn't be representing Trump anymore. "It's a real threat for Trump. Because these people are not going to go to jail for him. And it makes it possible that they are available for flipping." (33:30–34:40)
On March 23, 2023, Trump, facing imminent indictment, posted on social media: "OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!" This is incitement of violence. The next day, he referred to prosecutors as "degenerate psychopath[s]," saying "it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country".
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