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  • 2022-08-09 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Trump Say 'Anyone Being Investigated by the FBI Is Not Qualified To Be President'? (en)
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  • On Aug 8, 2022, news broke that the FBI had executed a search warrant at former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida. In response, Occupy Democrats and a number of other social media accounts shared a quote meme that claimed Trump had said several times in 2016, Anyone being investigated by the FBI is not qualified to be the president of the United States. We were unable to find evidence that Trump ever said these exact words. The supposed quote was widely shared on Twitter, both as a meme and in text form: According to The New York Times, the FBI's goal of searching of Trump's estate was to obtain information related to his handling of classified information. This matter was separate from the Justice Department’s investigation into the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation, the Times reported. The not qualified quote and meme that mentioned Trump and an FBI investigation may have been born out of a previous tweet from March 24, 2017. In that tweet, the same rumor was spread with a message in favor of impeaching him from office. Four days before this tweet was posted in 2017, The New York Times had reported that the FBI was investigating whether members of President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Four years later, The Associated Press reported the findings of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee issued its fifth and final report on Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and detailed the extent to which Trump campaign officials had involvement in the matter: In our searches for the origins of the purported not qualified Trump quote, we did locate several remarks by him that bear on the central theme of this claim. For example, Time.com reported that on Nov. 2, 2016, Trump said, If Hillary Clinton were to be elected, it would create an unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis. He was referencing the fact that the FBI had just announced days earlier that it had reopened the investigation into the former secretary of state's emails. On Nov. 3, Trump mentioned Clinton being under FBI investigation in a speech in Selma, North Carolina. According to a transcript from Factba.se, a website that transcribes presidential speeches, he also mentioned the word disqualified. On Nov. 5, Trump said that Clinton's current scandals and controversies would make it impossible for her to govern. The quote from Trump that might be closest to the not qualified message in the meme came from a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Oct. 31, 2016 (a date that was not included at the bottom of the meme). According to a video of the speech, Trump referenced over the course of several sentences the FBI's reopening of the investigation into Clinton and, separately, that he felt she was unfit and unqualified. The remarks begin below at the 13:06 mark in the video: A transcript of Trump's remarks from Oct. 31 went as follows: While the speech may have indicated Trump's apparent concern with a sitting U.S. president being the subject of an FBI investigation, the remarks did not contain the quote attributed to him in the Occupy Democrats meme. According to CNN.com, Clinton was once again cleared of wrongdoing on Nov. 6, 2016, just two days before Election Day. The investigation into Clinton did not last for years, as Trump had claimed it would. Trump also tweeted at least six times in 2016 that Clinton was unqualified or not qualified to be president. However, none of the tweets specifically mentioned the FBI investigation and all of them were tweeted well before the dates mentioned at the bottom of the Occupy Democrats meme. Former Democratic presidential primary candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said on April 6, 2016 that he believed Clinton was not qualified. But according to The Atlantic, Sanders did not mention the remarks during the speech with anything related to Clinton being investigated by the FBI. According to ABC News and CNN, Sanders appeared to backtrack a bit on his not qualified remarks later that same week. As for people who were in Trump's corner, former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway once tweeted on June 7, 2016, #Hillary made history today:we've not nominated someone under FBI investigation whom a majority of Americans says not trustworthy not honest. Sarah Sanders, who served as one of Trump's White House press secretaries, tweeted on Nov. 3, 2016, When you're attacking FBI agents because you're under criminal investigation, you're losing. This was a genuine quote: Occupy Democrats also shared this Sanders' quote in the aftermath of the FBI's search of Trump's property. In sum, we were unable to find evidence that Trump said the words, Anyone being investigated by the FBI is not qualified to be the president of the United States. Further, Factba.se also reached out to us and said that they, too, were unable to locate the quote in any past transcripts. For these reasons, we have rated this claim as Unproven. (en)
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