The Washington Post did a fact check on this absurd brouhaha about the FBI instructions when they served the warrant on Mar-a-Lago. He points to a particular right wing reporter, Julie Kelly, as the source of the hysteria and laid out the timeline:
1:28 p.m.
To her first tweet, Kelly attached another tweet in which she highlighted another document: “Oh my God. Armed FBI agents were preparing to confront Trump and even engage Secret Service if necessary. They were going to go door to door to terrorize MAL guests and even pick the locks. Gestapo.”
This page from the filing, titled “contingencies,” laid out procedures in the event the media or Trump unexpectedly arrived at the scene. The document, laden with abbreviations, says that if Trump were to appear, the Miami FBI executive manager and the on-scene coordinator “will be prepared to engage with FPOTUS [former president of the United States] and USSS [Secret Service] Security team.” In this context, “engage” means talk and coordinate. If the Secret Service agents on the ground were to resist, then the document directed that the discussion would be elevated to more senior officials, including “points of contact” that the FBI has with Secret Service through existing liaison relationships. (Two names are redacted.)
In an interview over the summer with the House Judiciary Committee, former FBI assistant director in charge Steven D’Antuono described what was planned. D’Antuono had disagreed with the decision to send the FBI to Mar-a-Lago, believing that Trump’s attorneys should have been given another chance to provide missing documents. But he said he lost the argument because there was concern that without quick action these highly classified documents could leak out, given the poor security at Trump’s estate.
In the interview, he disputed the idea that it was a raid. Officials knew that Trump was not in the state, residing at the time at his estate in New Jersey. (During the operation, he was visiting Trump Tower in Manhattan.)
“It wasn’t even a show of force, right, because we were all in agreement,” D’Antuono said. “We didn’t do a show of force, right. I was adamant about that, and that was something that we agreed on, right, the FBI agreed on, right. No raid jackets, no blazed FBI. We interact. We made sure we interacted with the Secret Service to make sure we could get into Mar-a-Lago with no issues. We’re not banging down any doors. We weren’t bringing any like FBI vehicles, everything that was reported about helicopters and a hundred people descending on, like a Die Hard movie, was completely untrue, right. That is not how we played it.”
He added that executing a search warrant was “not against policy or against the law.” During the search, the FBI seized 102 additional classified documents. Seventeen were marked top secret, 54 secret and 31 confidential.
1:54 p.m.
Kyle Becker, who has bounced around conservative media and now has his own news site, became the first to use the “assassin” language in a post for his nearly 500,000 followers.
“NEW: The FBI was basically authorized to assassinate Trump if necessary in Mar-a-Lago raid,” he wrote over Kelly’s original tweet.
3:08 p.m.
Mike Cernovich, a right-wing social media personality with 1.2 million followers, weighed in with his own take on Kelly’s tweet: “The FBI raid was designed to provoke a response. This was an assassination attempt on President Trump.”
Again, when the FBI agents went to Mar-a-Lago, they knew Trump was not in the state.
3:19 p.m.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), with 3.2 million followers, quickly elevated the stakes, also with a post over Kelly’s first tweet. “This is grounds for impeachment of Wray and Garland,” she wrote, referring to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Trump and team was cooperating the entire time with the FBI. Was deadly force authorized against Biden for his docs? Were they going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too???”
Other Republican lawmakers follow up with their own posts.
4:13 p.m.
Trump’s Truth Social account posts an image of Biden with the headline: “Biden’s DOJ authorized use of deadly force against President Trump in the Mar-a-Lago raid.”
5:21
Trump posts his own comment on his Truth Social Account: “WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”
As noted, the “reports” came from Trump’s own legal filing, so this should not have been a surprise to him.
6 p.m.
Trump issues a fundraising appeal: “BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME! It’s just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable.”
7:11 p.m.
Christina Bobb, who was on Trump’s legal team at the time of the search, posted: “WTF?!! They were prepared to kill me?! A few dozen FBI agents v. me and they were ready to kill me?!!! What in the world happened to the United States of America?!”
Months before the FBI search, Bobb had signed a document swearing that she had been told that “a diligent search” was conducted of boxes of records shipped from the White House to Florida when Trump left office, The Post reported.
8:17 p.m.
Former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, on his war room podcast, declares: “This was an attempted assassination attempt on Donald John Trump or people associated with him.”
The right is now totally bought into the lie that Biden tried to have Trump assassinated. It’s all over their social media and propaganda networks.
This is just a way to turn the creepy immunity argument that a president has the right to order Seal Team Six to kill his political opponent inside out — the “I know you are but what am I” tactic they love so much. But it’s also dangerous. This ratchets up the lie that Biden is the extremist who threatens democracy and the rule of law but the difference is that MAGA is full of violent, gun toting weirdos who have already shown a willingness to take matters into their own hands. It’s as irresponsible as it gets. But then, what else is new?