Today on The BradCast: We are now learning even more about what Trump didn’t bother to tell his followers when he played the victim card on Monday following the FBI’s search at his Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida. It’s becoming difficult to avoid the pretty clear conclusion that he is now simply hoping to foster political violence as the walls, the truth, and accountability close in on him. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]
First up today, here’s the original video version of the Lincoln Project’s amusing new ad, hoping to get inside Trump’s head and make him wonder who must be the reported “insider” that tipped off investigators about stolen national security documents Trump was believed to have been keeping at Mar-a-Lago.
Before diving fully back into the latest news following Monday’s Mar-a-Lago search and the reasons for it, we’ve got just a bit of encouraging news for Democrats and democracy lovers amid these decidedly UNconventional times. Today, a brief look at polling numbers trending toward Dems in this November’s mid-terms, particularly for the U.S. Senate, and how best to make sense of that data.
Then, after days of media speculation and parroting of misleading claims sourced largely Trump and his attorneys, some clearer, more plausible and better sourced details are finally beginning to emerge from several outlets regarding what actually happened at Mar-a-Lago, and why the FBI decided they needed to obtain a warrant from a federal court to execute their search of Trump’s property.
CNN sums much of it up well. But, long story short, after days of Trump and his gullible minions (including, shamefully enough, a bunch of top elected Republican officials) whining that the DoJ should have first taken less aggressive and invasive steps to get at whatever they were looking for, it turns out, DoJ very much already did!
Following a criminal referral from the National Archives in January, charging that incredibly sensitive national security documents had been stolen by Trump when he left office, a grand jury subpoenaed him for those documents in June. Top DoJ officials also visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and his attorneys around the same time to get the documents back. But while some were reportedly returned, others were not, according to both an insider and security surveillance video from inside Mar-a-Lago, reportedly turned over by the Trump Organization.
Documents that were withheld from the National Archives, and said to be of a highly classified nature, were also reportedly stored in the unsecured basement at Trump’s South Florida resort.
All of that, as Trump has been out-and-out hoping to scam the public and his supporters (I know, shocking!) by falsely portraying himself as the victim of outrageous “prosecutorial misconduct,” “the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats.” All part of little more than a “political witch hunt” which has resulted in the U.S. having become a “broken, Third-World Country.”
Except, if he wanted to prove any of that to be true, as we discussed yesterday with former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason, he could have simply released the warrant he was given by the FBI on Monday, detailing what they were looking for and what crimes they believe may have occurred, along with a full inventory that he was given, listing the documents and other materials that the FBI retrieved from his residence.
Trump could have done all of that. He did none of it.
On Thursday, however, Attorney General Merrick Garland offered brief remarks to announce that DoJ has now asked a federal judge to unseal the warrant, while declaring his support the men and women of the DoJ and FBI who have now been mercilessly targeted by Team Trump over the past week.
The selective release of at least part of the warrant by Trump’s attorneys, including the name of the federal magistrate judge who signed it, has resulted in anti-Semitic slurs and calls for extreme violence against the judge and his family. Some have even been posted to Trump’s own social media outlet.
It’s difficult to believe that political violence isn’t the whole point of what the disgraced former President is now doing, as the walls continued to close in on him. An attempted attack at an FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio today, by a man with body armor, a nail-gun and an AR-15, would seem to underscore that. (Shortly after airtime, it was reported that the man, injured in a gunfight as he fled but still on the run as of airtime, had been killed by authorities. Also, that the man had attended Trump’s January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.)
Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the deadly effects of our climate emergency quickly worsen around the world; elected Republican officials in the U.S. are found to have been conspiring to punish private companies working to curb carbon emissions; and at least one country with a long history of denialism among its rightwing elected class (other than the U.S.), is finally getting on board to cut greenhouse gas emissions after voters recently elected non-deniers to take control of its government…
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