Reporters who cover sensitive beats sometimes have a sense when big news is about to break. But not this time. The FBI’s Monday morning search of Mar-a-Lago — a thunderclap in American political history — happened so quietly, so secretly, that it wasn’t caught on camera at all. For the most part reporters didn’t catch wind of the FBI action until after it was over. By the time local TV news cameras showed up outside the club, there was almost nothing to see. Websites used file photos of the Florida resort since there were no dramatic shots of the search.
What everyone wants to see is the search warrant. As Elie Honig pointed out right away on CNN, “in order to get a search warrant in the federal system, prosecutors have to establish probable cause that a crime was committed,” and a judge has to sign off.
This feels like a “where were you when?” moment of the Trump era — an era that is very much overlapping with the Biden era. But its ultimate level of import is impossible to judge right now. So here are some notes about the first four hours of media coverage:
— Trump tried to manage the news by announcing it himself in a lengthy screed. Trump and some of his allies “have a long-standing habit of conflating legal problems with PR problems,” Maggie Haberman said on CNN. “At the moment, they are treating this like it’s a PR problem,” she added, “but it’s a legal problem…”
— CNN’s Gabby Orr reported that Trump attorney Christina Bobb, a former host on One America News, was present for the Mar-a-Lago search.
— Trump’s statement supplied many of the talking points that were immediately used on Fox, Newsmax, and across the right-wing web. The MAGA media message is: The government is corrupt, the FBI is a threat to real Americans, the Democrats are to blame, and the Republicans are going to correct it.
— When Trump left Trump Tower in NYC on Monday evening, he did not respond to shouted questions from reporters about the FBI.
Silence from DOJ
Bad timing for Biden?
Trump’s “disinfo supply”
While government entities are staying quiet about the investigation, Trump allies are being loud. Eric Trump went on Sean Hannity’s show; reiterated his father’s victimhood narrative; and confirmed that the search warrant related to the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents.
Some of the initial news alerts about the FBI action were untrue because, true to form, some parts of Trump’s statement were untrue. He said his home was “currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” but all the reliable reporting indicated that the FBI action had concluded by the time he spoke out.
This Florida reporter was the first to know
>> More: “In a phone call with Slate, Schorsch said that he had heard about the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago from a ‘longtime source in Republican politics who has a law enforcement background’ and knew a lot about ‘south Florida law enforcement…'”