In a post on Truth Social, the former president responded to a Fox News report Saturday that the FBI informed Trump’s team after the raid that some of the documents they seized were protected by attorney-client privilege. The Justice Department has not confirmed this publicly or commented on the investigation beyond a brief statement delivered to reporters by Attorney General Merrick Garland last week. The agency typically does not comment at all on ongoing investigations. “Oh wonderful! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous Mar-a-Lago raid, took boxes of privileged “attorney-client” material, as well as “executive” privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken. With a copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were obtained. Thank you!” Trump tweeted on Sunday. The post followed another rant by the president about the FBI raid that has caught the attention of the US political world in the past week. In his latest travesty, the former president once again blamed the DOJ and FBI for their investigation into his 2016 campaign and suggested both a political motive for the raid and the baseless conspiracy that FBI agents planted evidence in the boxes of the documents seized from Mar-a. – Hare. “The whole world watched as the FBI rummaged through the house, including the closets (and the former First Lady’s clothes!), just out of control. They even asked for the security cameras to be turned off (we refused), but there was no way to know if what they got was legit or if there was a “plant?” This was the FBI after all!” the former president wrote. His defenders have been frustrated all over the mainstream media this week as defenders of his alleged retention of highly classified documents have become increasingly absurd. In recent days, his allies have insisted that the FBI was dismissed, that agents were planting evidence and that Mr. Trump had unilaterally declassified all the documents he had retained (though they provided no evidence to back that up). At the same time, others on Capitol Hill who remain in the president’s camp but have not responded to the call to eliminate the FBI have tried, with little success, to explain why documents have been classified at the highest level (including, according to The Washington Post, some dealing with nuclear policy or capabilities) could possibly be stored at the notoriously porous Mar-a-Lago under any acceptable conditions. GOP rifts over Mr. Trump’s defense have prompted more intra-party accusations of disloyalty leveled at fellow Republicans by the former president’s allies, as his staunchest supporters are angered by the reluctance of congressional Republicans to fully bow to the unfounded conspiracies and the baseless accusations leveled at the FBI.
