On Wednesday, The Washington Post took us behind the scenes into what it reports were heated debates between FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors over whether to search for classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, or close the case altogether. Like any glimpse at the proverbial sausage being made, the revelations weren’t pretty, and the raw details were difficult to digest.
Rigorous — and even loud — disagreements between FBI agents and federal prosecutors frequently happen in complex, high-stakes cases.
The truth is that rigorous — and even loud — disagreements between FBI agents and federal prosecutors frequently happen in complex, high-stakes cases. That’s a sign of a healthy collaborative environment. So the fact that there were disagreements on how or if to proceed with an investigation into Trump isn’t necessarily a problem. But I’m convinced that these disagreements arose in part because of the attacks Trump has launched against the FBI, and that’s a serious concern.
The newspaper cites four officials with knowledge of the case who say that “months of disputes,” beginning in May 2022, involved at least “two senior agents” in the FBI’s Washington field office who resisted a plan to use a search warrant “and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property.” The FBI pushback led to an incremental, and perhaps prudent, step: the issuance of a subpoena for the records and a June 3 visit to Mar-a-Lago. After that June visit, during which the Trump team had asserted it had turned over everything, some of the officials who spoke to The Washington Post said some FBI agents “wanted to shutter the criminal investigation altogether.”
Even after a video showing a Trump employee moving boxes from where other classified documents were stored and even after witnesses indicated there were still more classified documents on the property, according to The Washington Post, two…
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