According to a new report by Newsweek, the dramatic and unprecedented raid on the home of the former president was “based” largely on information from an FBI confidential human source,” who told the agency that 45th President Donald Trump was “hiding” classified documents, and subsequently pinpointed their location.
Claims that an informant leaked the information to the FBI were brought forth by two senior government officials with direct knowledge of the agency’s operations against Trump, the report claims. These moles had supposedly been embedded in Trump’s orbit, and there has been much speculation about their identities.
According to Newsweek’s government sources, the FBI had timed the raid on Trump’s home so that it would occur while he was in New York.
Agency leaders in D.C. and Miami believed that raiding Trump’s home while he was present would give him a “photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or attempt to thwart the raid),” said one of the sources.
The immense backlash from the GOP and and public outcry proved the FBI’s supposed attempt to keep the raid “low-profile” futile. “What a spectacular backfire,” said one of the officials.
Helicopters outside Mar-a-Lago
The two officials insist that the raid wasn’t political.
“I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official claimed. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.”
“They were seeking to avoid any media circus,” said the second source, a senior intelligence official. “So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout.”
On Tuesday President Trump decried what he described as a “coordinated attack” against him by “Radical left Democrat” state and local district attorneys following the controversial raid.
The in a new statement published on his social media platform Truth Social, the former president doubled down on his claims that the United States has become a “third world country” and lamented what he referred to as a “continuation” of the Russia hoax, Mueller report, and both impeachment debacles.
“A horrible thing that took place yesterday at Mar-a-Lago,” the 45th president wrote. “We are no better than a third world country, a banana republic.”
