WaPo Reveals FBI Terrified Of Pissing Off Trump By Treating Him Like Literally Anyone Else Who Stole Classified Docs
(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Over on Truth Social, Trump spends his days screeching into the ether about “Mad Dog Psycho Jack Smith”, “Crooked Democrat Prosecutors, many of them Racists in Reverse”, and “MASSIVE & UNPRECEDENTED PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT DUE TO TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME & BIG LEADS AGAINST BOTH PARTIES IN POLLS!!!”
It’s a lot. It’s also completely untethered to reality, as shown in the Washington Post’s recent piece on the internal struggle at the DOJ preceding the search of the former president’s home last August. Far from being an aggressive, politically motivated pursuit of Trump, this new reporting by the Post confirms that the FBI treated him with kid gloves, worried about seeming too political, or, in the case of career employees, risking retribution should Trump return to power in 2025.
The story began in January of 2022 when, after months of requests, Trump returned 15 boxes of government records to the National Archives. The cache contained 184 classified documents totaling some 700 pages. Worse still, it was clear to the archivists that there were still many classified documents still unaccounted for.
This set off a “tense tug of war” between prosecutors seeking to treat Trump as they would any other person in possession of improperly retained classified documents, and FBI agents in the Washington field office, who counseled a “cooperative rather than confrontational approach.” While the DOJ pushed to seek judicial authorization for a warrant, the FBI, particularly Steven M. D’Antuono, then the head of the Washington field office, was much more sensitive to political blowback and preferred negotiating with the former president for consent to search his property.
But the prosecutors learned FBI agents were still loath to conduct a surprise search. They also heard from top FBI officials that some agents were simply afraid: They worried taking aggressive steps investigating Trump could blemish or even end their careers, according to some people with knowledge of the discussions. One official dubbed it “the hangover of Crossfire Hurricane,” a reference to the FBI investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections to the Trump campaign, the people said. As president, Trump repeatedly targeted some FBI officials involved in the Russia case.
In May the parties compromised, issuing a subpoena for any documents bearing classified markings, after which the FBI sought to shut the investigation down in June when the president’s lawyers falsely attested to having handed over all documents bearing classified markings. But prosecutors refused, and, after collecting video evidence that Trump was moving boxes in and out of the storage locker where he stored presidential records, prepared to proceed with the warrant.
In a quote sure to be cited by Trump’s lawyers, who have argued that there’s no enforcement mechanism for the Presidential Records act, D’Antuono argued with Jay Bratt, head of the DOJ’s Counterintelligence Division, that the FBI shouldn’t seize anything but classified documents because, “We are not the presidential records police.”
D’Antuono remained unpersuaded about the wisdom of conducting a raid on the former president’s private club, even as he conceded that prosecutors had developed probable cause. He preferred to negotiate with Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran to gain permission to access the property, and even on the day of the search he advocated waiting to execute the warrant until Corcoran could catch a flight from Baltimore to Palm Beach. In contrast, prosecutors “were highly suspicious of him and feared that appealing to Corcoran risked that word would spread through Trump’s circle, giving the former president or his associates time to hide or destroy evidence, according to people familiar with the internal debate.”
That suspicion appears to continue today. The Special Counsel is reported to have recently sought to compel Corcoran’s testimony to the grand jury under the crime-fraud exception. In the meantime, Trump continues to inveigh against the Biden administration, in increasingly apocalyptic terms.
“World War III is looming, like never before, in the very dark and murky background,” he warned Saturday, before scream-posting that “HOPELESS JOE BIDEN IS LEADING US INTO OBLIVION!!!”
Well, at least he’s not back on Twitter … yet.
Showdown before the raid: FBI agents and prosecutors argued over Trump [WaPo]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics