Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, August 14, 2022
The disturbingly truthful Donald J Trump, who watched CCTV coverage of the raid on his home, has floated the possibility that the FBI could have planted evidence in Mar-a-Lago Monday in order to give Joe Biden’s Department of Justice an avenue to file charges against him because the partisan Jan. 6 Committee hearings have yet to produce anything significant.
In a post to Truth Social on Sunday, former President Donald Trump wrote: “Just left a large gathering of people and all they could talk about was the complete and total stranglehold that the Radical Left Democrats have over the DOJ & FBI. It shouldn’t be that way. Nobody goes after BLM, ANTIFA, or the rest, despite murder, beatings, and burning down large sections of cities, a very unfair double standard. They definitely won’t attack the home of a former Democrat President, nor should they. It is all so out of control, great simmering anger!”
“The FBI and others from the Federal Government would not let anyone, including my lawyers, be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago,” Trump wrote on Truth Social following the raid.
“Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting.’ Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out? Obama and Clinton were never ‘raided,’ despite big disputes!” he added.
(The PDF of the unsealed search warrant and attachments is available here via Courtlistener.)
Trump attorney Christina Bobb, who was forced to wait outside for many hours while the FBI conducted the raid, said the former president and many family members watched the FBI during “the whole” episode via CCTV.
“It’s kind of funny. I think the folks in New York, President Trump and his family, probably had a better view than I did because they had the CCTV, they were able to watch,” Bobb told the streaming network Real America’s Voice. “I was, you know, I was stuck in the parking lot there to you know, collect paper and answer questions. But they were actually able to see the whole thing. So they actually have a better idea of what took place inside.”
Since the FBI stormed Mar-a-Lago, Trump said his polling numbers have gone up and GOP fundraising has increased as well: “My poll numbers are the strongest they have ever been, fundraising by the Republican Party is breaking all records, and midterm elections are fast approaching. This unprecedented political weaponization of law enforcement is inappropriate and highly unethical. The world is watching as our Country is being brought to a new low, not only on our border, crime, economy, energy, national security, and so much more, but also with respect to our sacred elections!”
Washington Times columnist Cheryl K. Chumley noted that many of the same players who participated in the bogus Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Trump-Russia “collusion” took part in the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
“And so now you have these same players who were going after his private residence, rifling through Melania’s own clothes in her closet for some strange, odd reason,” Chumbley said on the Todd Starnes podcast. “And we’re supposed to fall on the side of believing whatever they produce from this search is truthful and honest. You have to have red flags about whatever documents or information comes forward. You have to be questioning yourself, is this a plant or was it really there?”
Washington Times columnist Rowan Scarborough noted in an Aug. 11 op-ed that it was on March 20, 2017 when the Hillary Clinton-fueled “insurrection” against Trump began.
“Trump’s enemies scored a daily double that day that set the stage for months to come,” Scarborough wrote.
During a House Intelligence Committee hearing on that day, led by Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, “panel Democrats gleefully validated the Christopher Steele dossier bought by the Hillary Clinton campaign and spread all over the town’s levers of power. Secondly, at the witness table, then-FBI Director James B. Comey, a dossier devotee, announced that the entire Trump campaign was under investigation for Kremlin interference in the 2016 election,” Scarborough noted.
“Thus, the ground rules were set two months into the new president’s tenure. When it comes to harassing Mr. Trump, anything goes.”
Fast-forward to Aug. 8 at Mar-a-Lago for the latest chapter in the “insurrection” against Trump.
“A historical first rooted in that March 20, 2017, rule-making,” Scarborough pointed out. “Attorney General Merrick Garland and a compliant FBI raided the home of President Biden’s chief political rival in 2024. Swarming federal agents put the United States in the pantheon of dictatorial regimes around the world who trample the opposition’s leader who in this case is polling better than inflationary Biden.”
The bogus Trump dossier had been printed by BuzzFeed during the presidential transition. Democrats at the March 20, 2017, House hearing used it against Trump though none of it was confirmed.
“I watched the hearing and was struck by how Democrats, sitting on a committee that is supposed to deal in facts, embraced unproven — even ludicrous — claims,” Scarborough noted, citing one example:
Democrat Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas: “I want to take a moment to turn to the Christopher Steele dossier, which was first mentioned in the media just before the election and published in full by media outlets in January. My focus today is to explore how many claims within Steele’s dossier are looking more and more likely, as though they are accurate.”
“This is not someone who doesn’t know how to run a source and not someone without contacts. The allegations it raises about President Trump’s campaign aides’ connections to Russians when overlaid with known established facts and timelines from the 2016 campaign, are very revealing.”
Democrats even gave Steele credit for scoops you could find online before the dossier writing began that June, such as this nugget on campaign volunteer Carter Page:
“Is it a coincidence that the Russian gas company, Rosneft, sold a 19% share after former British intelligence officer Steele was told by Russian sources that Carter Page was offered fees on a deal of just that size?” asked Schiff.
The problem is, that the exact number, 19%, was announced in Moscow beforehand.
“March 20, 2017, changed the rules,” Scarborough wrote. “Hit Trump with whatever you’ve got.”
The claims: Russia funded the Trump campaign through the National Rifle Association; Mr. Trump maintained a secret line of communication with Russian-oligarch-owned Alfa Bank; Ukraine pro-Russia operatives made payments to Mr. Manafort based on a supposed “black ledger”; Mr. Manafort secretly traveled to London to meet with Wikileaks; U.S. intelligence owned reams of communication intercepts between the Trump campaign and Kremlin intelligence; A Russian-born scholar at Cambridge University in England had some sort of inappropriate relationship with Michael Flynn.
“None of those tales panned out,” Scarborough wrote.
Scarborough concluded:
“The FBI Mar-a-Lago raid is clearly designed to find documents on which Garland can bring an indictment related to Jan. 6. He knows a sure winner with a D.C. jury in waiting. If liberals can promote a piece of Democratic-funded fiction to bring down a president and then sweep it into the memory hole, the Left rightly believes it can unleash just about any dirty trick against Trump — to include having the FBI storm his home.”
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