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  • 2022-08-09 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Trump Issue This Statement About FBI Raid of His Mar-a-Lago Home? (en)
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  • Former U.S. President Donald Trump issued a statement on Aug. 8, 2022, that said the FBI had raided his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, and broke into his safe. The full statement spread across social media, including on Twitter and Reddit. The statement was released by his political action committee, according to National Public Radio, and posted on Truth Social by Trump's official account, @realDonaldTrump. The statement read, in part: Law-enforcement sources told ABC News that they indeed conducted a search of the property at 10 a.m. on Aug. 8. However, the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to comment on the matter, as of this writing. Trump’s son, Eric, spoke to Fox News about the raid: The purpose of the raid was, from what they said, was because the National Archives wanted to corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession. And my father has worked so collaboratively with them for months. In fact, the lawyer that's been working on this was totally shocked. He goes, 'I have such an amazing relationship with these people and all of a sudden, on no notice, they send 20 cars and 30 agents?' In the past, similar-looking statements have surfaced on social media and been falsely attributed to Trump. After he was banned from some social media platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump typically released statements through email or Truth Social, then members of the media shared the messages to mainstream social media sites such as Twitter. That chain of communication meant many onlookers encountered real statements by the former president from secondary sources (like journalists’ tweets) and digital creations of fake statements blended in well with those genuine messages. However, the statement about the FBI raid was not one of those fabrications. Kaitlan Collins, CNN’s White House correspondent, tweeted the full message, which compared the actions of FBI agents to that of operatives [who] broke into the Democrat National Committee during the 1972 Watergate scandal and raised accusations against Trump's political rivals, particularly Hillary Clinton. The raid occurred as part of an investigation into whether Trump took classified records from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence. It also took place amid a separate grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The DOJ began investigating after the National Archives and Records Administration said it received 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022. The National Archives said Trump should have turned over that material upon leaving office, and requested that the DOJ investigate. (en)
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