Questions by independent media following the FBI's unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago focused on exactly what documents the Department of Justice deployed its agents to recover.
Some legal analysts suggested the DOJ was desperate to track down anything that Trump may have taken with him that pertained to the bogus but damaging Trump-Russia collusion investigation, including Hillary Clinton's emails.
On Thursday, Trump provided the curious with a flashback to 28 days before the 2020 election.
He posted to Truth Social an Oct. 7, 2020 article by the Daily Mail headlined: "Trump authorizes 'total' declassification of ALL documents related to Hillary's email scandal and the 'Russia hoax' as he calls the FBI 'scum.' "
He also posted a White House memorandum titled "Memorandum on Declassification of Certain Materials Related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation" which was issued on Jan. 19, 2021, one day before he departed D.C.
Back when he could still tweet, Trump wrote on Oct. 6, 2020: "I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!"
Trump later added: "All Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago. Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country. Act!!!"
The Daily Mail article from Oct. 6, 2020 notes that John Ratcliffe, then the Director of National Intelligence, had declassified notes from former CIA Director John Brennan that showed President Barack Obama was briefed on a "plan" to tie Trump to Russia as a "means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server" ahead of the 2016 election.
"Today, at the direction of President Trump, I declassified additional documents relevant to ongoing Congressional oversight and investigative activities," Ratcliffe said in a statement at the time.
The notes were taken after Obama had been briefed on the matter, the Daily Mail cited a source familiar with the matter as saying.
Trump fired off a barrage of 42 tweets on Oct. 6, 2020. In another of them, he wrote: "So I had to constantly fight off all of this Scum, achieve more than any other President in First Term, and then they talk Chaos. They created crimes against me and this administration!"
In another, he wrote: "Can't believe these con men are not yet being PROSECUTED. Pathetic!"
Back to the present, the former president noted in a Truth Social post on Thursday: "The WAPO story that 'Trump is scrambling to add seasoned lawyers' to the Mar-a-Lago Raid case is, as usual, FAKE NEWS. I already have excellent and experienced lawyers — am very happy with them. This is highly political prosecutorial misconduct, I have not been charged with anything and, most importantly, I did nothing wrong. Thank you!"
An Aug. 16 story that includes the byline of five "reporters," states: "Former president Donald Trump and close aides have spent the eight days since the FBI searched his Florida home rushing to assemble a team of respected defense lawyers. But the answer they keep hearing is 'no.' "
Meanwhile, John Solomon of Just the News reported on Aug. 17 that "a decade-old case over audio tapes that Bill Clinton once kept in his sock drawer may have significant impact over the FBI search of Melania Trump's closet and Donald Trump's personal office."
The case is titled Judicial Watch v. National Archives and Records Administration and it involved an effort by the government watchdog group to compel the Archives to forcibly seize hours of audio recordings that Clinton made during his presidency with historian Taylor Branch. The tapes became the focal point of a 2009 book that Branch wrote.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected Judicial Watch's suit by concluding there was no provision in the Presidential Records Act to force the National Archives to seize records from a former president.
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