CLAY: We begin with more of the continuing fallout from the FBI’s, frankly, indefensible, it appears, more and more every single day, raid on Donald Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. So couple of details that are out. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Merrick Garland debated for weeks whether to officially endorse the warrants in this case or not and allow the search to take place at Mar-a-Lago. That certainly calls into question this idea that the warrants had to be granted because there were such alarming circumstances surrounding these confidential materials that Trump reportedly had at Mar-a-Lago.

If you truly were encountered about national security, first of all maybe you’d get them in the first 18 months of the Biden presidency. Second, how do you debate whether or not to grant these warrants as the attorney general for weeks, if it is such a clear-cut case? I think, Buck, what happened was Maggie Haberman at the New York Times wrote a story with a picture, I believe it was, about Trump destroying documents. And there’s a picture, like, from a toilet or something if I remember correctly that was in her story and I think that’s what put Merrick Garland personally over the hump here.

NEW IN AXIOS: Trump denied flushing documents as president, as I learned during reporting last year for CONFIDENCE MAN. A Trump White House source recently provided PHOTOS of paper with Trump’s handwriting in two different toilets via @mikeallen https://t.co/wv6rrupO1n

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 8, 2022

Now, in addition to the fact that he debated for weeks and it calls into question whether there were any exigent circumstances necessitating this warrant, also, Buck, we broke this story yesterday, I mean, Trump did on his TRUTH Social account, this search is supposed to be severely curtailed, specific in nature. Instead it appears that the FBI went in, Buck, and just hoovered-up as much as they possibly could, including three different passports for President Donald Trump. Two expired, one as you suggested might be the case a diplomatic passport that is still in effect. They then had their stooges in the media report that they hadn’t done it before having to schedule that they had in fact seized these passports.

And now there is going to be a hearing on Thursday afternoon, early on Thursday afternoon about whether the full affidavit to support the granting of this warrant should be released to the public as well. The Department of Justice vociferously opposed to that idea. This would be a big win for Trump, and it’s, I think, evidence that all of the details surrounding this warrant search at Mar-a-Lago are starting to fall apart in rapid order.

BUCK: It’s looking like the Democrat plan for the election is what some would call lawfare — as in they’re just using the legal apparatus as a weapon of politics in every way they possibly can. Obviously, first and foremost with the Mar-a-Lago raid, but let’s also keep in mind that you just had Rudy Giuliani announce yesterday officially as another target of a federal investigation looking into the “electors scheme,” the alternate electors slate. And every time I read this, they try to use all these words, you know, “false” and “willfully” and “knowingly.” And the truth of the matter is that bad faith is something the Democrats have perfected with the Russia collusion lie. Bad faith operation of government at the FBI, the DOJ, the intelligence community, and now they want to criminalize what they say is bad faith on the other side by Trump’s lawyers.

Essentially, they find a way to use the process they believe to their advantage. It doesn’t succeed, and they get federally charged anyway? I mean, they’re gonna lock up Rudy Giuliani, the guy who turned New York City around, one time presidential candidate, by the way, himself? They’re bringing all these different suits, Clay. I mean, this is the plan. They can’t win based on the Democrat or Biden regard going into this midterm, and they know it. So they’re doing all this stuff. I do believe if they unleash the affidavit, unveil — you know — unveil isn’t the word I’m looking for — an affidavit is doesn’t need to be unleashed. If they —

CLAY: Unveiled could be fun, too, though.

BUCK: That would be interesting. Remember the old — what it was? — the old fruit punch commercial with the big — the big pitcher that would bust through the wall —

CLAY: Oh, yeah, Hawaiian —

BUCK: Hawaiian punch. Yeah. The affidavit could come flying out like that. But here’s the problem with releasing the affidavit, I think — or I shouldn’t say the problem. If they release it and it’s flimsy, the Democrats are just toast on this one. If they release it and it’s Trump — remember I made a joke about this. I just reminded this last night. I said, it’s not like Trump has the nuclear codes under his pillow. The day of the raid, before the nuclear story broke a few days later. So sure enough this is what they’re saying.

And if they are making allegations, Clay, of extreme seriousness in the documents, they’re gonna have to charge somebody or else what was this all about, right? The release of the affidavit is no minor thing, because it either makes this thing look like a big belly flop for the libs or it means there’s an indictment coming down.

CLAY: Well, the fact —

BUCK: By the way, I think they won’t unseal it just to be clear. I don’t think they will unseal it.

CLAY: The Department of Justice, what’s rapid happened here is it feels like there was a game of chicken going on, and Merrick Garland came out, was it Thursday, Buck, Thursday afternoon last week, and he said, we’re happen to release the details on the warrant, and it was like he was daring Trump to okay it. And then Trump said, okay, yeah, let’s go ahead and release the details on the warrant. And last night Trump said, hey, I want this affidavit released as well. And now the Department of Justice is like, “no, no, no, we can’t do that.”

Now, one thing I will say — and you know this better than anybody — the affidavit, if it comes out, is likely to be so redacted in terms of what is written and what is allowed to be seen there that we may not get any real sense for what is in it just because so much of it’s gonna be blacked out because they’re gonna argue —

BUCK: That’s the other possibility. And we’re also never going to see — never — I mean, Trump could be facing prosecution sitting in court, and they’re gonna be saying these documents are too secret. I mean, this is one of the legal strategies in the past that people use is something called graymail, and that’s where the government says here’s the secret stuff that this person did and then they try to get the judge to say, it’s not that secret, release it, and the government response is, well, we can’t have people actually know what’s in there; so I guess we’re gonna have to drop the charges.

Now, they’ve tried to figure out procedures so that that doesn’t happen, but graymail is something that the government has to be aware of generally in national security prosecutions of secret information, and I’m just saying right now I don’t think they’re gonna unseal the affidavit, Clay. They’re never gonna release the actual document because if they actually show you the documents, then what’s the point of prosecuting Trump for the possible exposure to the public of the document?

CLAY: There’s so much still to unpack here. Let’s not underrate that they managed to seize passports. Because yesterday, Buck, when this came out, I think I said, maybe they accidentally took ’em. And you were like, they accidentally took the passport. What is going on in terms of their search? They were there nine hours. It’s not like they went in, Buck, and said, okay, there’s nine boxes here. Let’s grab them all.

I would imagine — look. I don’t know about you, but my wife is in charge of our passports because she doesn’t trust me to be able to keep up with them. And so I never really know where our passports are in the house, right? Like my wife and the kids’ passports and everything else. But I would think that they’re probably not — that Trump’s passport is, probably, Buck, not under lock and key in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, right? That would seem to be a really poor choice by Trump just in terms of being able to find it. This feels like something that they hoovered-up and grabbed as much as they possibly could and didn’t even look at all these documents.

BUCK: That makes sense.

CLAY: — for nine hours.

BUCK: That makes sense from the perspective of the people who ordered this and went about it. Meaning, this raid on Mar-a-Lago against Donald Trump was clearly — I mean, you said, they’re now reporting, Merrick Garland did the whole, “should I, shouldn’t I?” thing.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Because even he knows as much as they hate Trump — now they’re trying to act like, oh, you just, you know, it’s a procedure, it’s the law. No. This was a huge deal. I know our audience knows that, but we need to remind ourselves of this because there’s gonna be gaslighting. Oh, it was just a — no, this was a major thing. And there’s a bit of an insurance policy that both the politicized Democrats like garland as well as the bureaucracy in the deep-staters have here by getting as much as possible. Because, okay. Maybe they decide not to go all-in, depending on how the affidavit goes and everything else, on the classified documents part of this, Clay.

They can make the argument that I just said out loud, which is it’s too sensitive so we’re just gonna — we have the documents now, but we can’t expose this to the public. They push that away. But by hoovering everything, maybe they get some interesting January 6 stuff that’s not even about criminal prosecution, of course, but that will get selectively leaked to the press, and it gives them political ammunition and cover for the raid when — as this rolls on.

CLAY: It makes it feel, the seizing of the passports does to me, Buck — and I think I would continue to hammer on this if I were the Trump people, if I’m Republicans attacking this truly extraordinary, never happened before in the history of American judicial system, investigation of a former president by a current sitting president who might be running against him. It makes it feel like a fishing expedition, as opposed to this targeted strike designed to try and get specific documents which were incredibly important to the well-being and safety and health of our country. They sent in 20-plus FBI agents to grab whatever they could, and they were so lacking in specificity, Buck, it was such a fishing expedition that they grabbed the former president’s passports, which is a big deal, all right? ‘Cause we talked about this yesterday.

And I said, man, this is something you do when you’re trying to keep somebody from fleeing the country after you’ve already charged them with a crime. And I was operating under the assumption that it was intentional because I was thinking there’s no way you accidentally end up with the president’s passports unless you are grabbing so much material, to your point, that it’s such a fishing expedition, you’re Hoovering up everything that you can, and then you have your team go over it all hoping to find something that you can allege is a major violation by Trump.

BUCK: They used the word “unprecedented” so many times when Trump was president and then people had to point out no, here are the precedents. They do unprecedented things against Trump and expect us not to remember or not to notice. I mean, they went in — remember, they seized Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer’s, they seized his records. This is a raid of his home.

They have been fighting town seal Trump’s taxes. They have been seized now thousands of pages of documents from his home. They have gotten so much, you know, they’ve gone so all-out and so scorched-earth. And, Clay, they keep coming up with nothing. This is the part of this that’s so amazing. If Trump was the evil, Machiavellian genius that they seem to think he is or just the evil thug, whatever, that they say is, don’t we think they would have gotten something? Wouldn’t the smoking gun have actually been a gun that was smoking at some point? But no. But no, we get this instead. So we all see what’s going on here.