Miranda Devine Brings Us Details on the Mar-a-Lago Raid

BUCK: We are moments away from the attorney general for the Biden administration, Merrick Garland, making a statement here about the Mar-a-Lago raid and perhaps more than that. We’re also joined by Miranda Devine right now from the New York Post, who has been breaking news on this all week. Miranda, as always, we appreciate you making time for us.

DEVINE: Pleasure, Clay and Buck. Always love to be with you.

BUCK: So, we may have to jump right into this and we’ll have you react to it, Miranda —

DEVINE: Yes.

BUCK: — as Merrick Garland’s about to speak. What are your expectations, what are you gonna say, and what is your focus right now on what we need to find out?

DEVINE: Well, look. I’m glad that Merrick Garland is finally breaking his silence on this raid. He really should have done it much earlier. And I hope that what he does is reassure the American people that this is not a political hit on the former president, that he needs to explain the raid and basically tell us what the predicate was, you know? We know from, you know, people who have told us that the warrant solely dwelled on the Presidential Records Act and any classified information that might have been contained in those boxes that were packed up on behalf of Donald Trump from the White House and now or then were taken and put in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago when they were under lock and key.

And that’s what the warrant said. So, now we want Merrick Garland to say that that is all that the FBI was looking for. And he needs to be really clear about that, because if at some point in the future the FBI says, oh, we didn’t find anything to do with the Presidential Records Act, but we did find this piece of information relating to January 6th or some other piece of information relating to one or the other, six or seven investigations, supposedly, that people are trying to pin on Donald Trump, then that would show that the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago just for a fishing expedition.

And it would I guess concern the suspicions of people who believe that they went looking for a crime. You know, they just…were they going to pin something on Donald Trump come what may because they don’t want him to run in 2024. That’s what it looks like, and the reason that people don’t trust the FBI is because of the history of their involvement and the corruption in the FBI to do with the Russia collusion hoax. Their, you know, knowing that the Steele dossier was bogus and then predicating the investigation on the leaked text messages between FBI people talking in, malicious and derogatory terms about President Trump and how they were gonna stop him.

You know, James Comey and his deputy, McCabe, leaking confidential information and so on. So, the FBI has dirty hands when it comes to Donald Trump. And that’s why Merrick Garland has to ensure, as does Christopher Wray, the FBI director, that they are very detailed in their explanation about why they went to this unprecedented extent of raiding a former president’s home.

CLAY: Miranda, what do you think about this sudden acceleration, it feels? Because in June there were reports that they were there, Trump came by, they shook hands, there was a very sort of conciliatory rapprochement that might have been going on between the two, and then we got to a warrant, a nine-hour investigation and your reporting at the New York Post that they’re going through Melania Trump’s closet as well. What happened? What was the acceleration here? What was the lit match that took this in June from something where they’re interacting fairly — fairly, it seems, reasonably — to suddenly an unexpected raid?

DEVINE: Well, there’s two sides to the story. Trump side says that they were cooperating fully with the FBI over these, you know, presidential records. And can I say that he’s not the only president who’s taken material documents and so on from the White House, mementos and things and have had to have been asked to give it back, Barack Obama being one. So, I think that, you know, the idea that it’s just about mishandled documents is a little hard to believe. But I think that the lawyers, the Trump lawyers say that they’ve been cooperating with the FBI.

And as you say, at the end of May, a whole bunch of FBI agents came to Mar-a-Lago, they spent hours inside that locked storage room going through these 15 boxes of material. And they were overseen by Trump’s lawyers. And at some point, we’re hearing from leaks from the Department of Justice that those talks broke down. So, that’s not what I’ve heard from Trump side but, you know, obviously something happened to precipitate this. And so, then we had the raid on Monday, and, you know, there’s a leak from inside the Department of Justice which claims that they wanted to do it in a low-key way.

So, they waited until Donald Trump wasn’t there because the Trump family has decamped to Bedminster, New Jersey, to his golf resort there for the summer and in fact Mar-a-Lago’s closed down; there’s just a skeleton staff there, rooms are locked and had to be unlocked by the few employees left for the FBI. And the FBI had lunch as they told the lawyers who sort of rushed there after the fact that we can go anywhere we want.

This warrant, which they waved in front of them and, first of all, would not show to one of Trump’s lawyers, told them that they could go wherever they wanted in his vast complex. And they seemed to confine themselves to the private quarters of the Trumps, going into every room there, going through closets, including Melania Trump’s I assume voluminous walk-in wardrobe.

And also, they spent several hours, I’m told, in a separate part of the building in the private office of Donald Trump, and they went through everything there and also they had brought along a safe cracker to open the safe. It’s a hotel-style safe, I’m told. Eric Trump has said that there was nothing in the safe. I haven’t heard that, but I take his word for it. And then the other place they went, of course, was that locked basement storage room with the 15 boxes from the White House which they’d already had seen access to. They, I’m told, did take those boxes away, but there were, you know, at least 30, I’m told, you know, FBI agents there in plainclothes, and they spent over nine hours combing through absolutely everything.

BUCK: Miranda Devine of the New York Post. Miranda, always great work on this. Thank you so much for being with us.

DEVINE: Pleasure.