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Editors note:These two columns by David Corn first appeared in his newsletter, Our Land.But we wanted to make sure as many readers as possible have a chance to see them. Our Landis written by David twice a week and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a monthbut you can sign up for a free 30-day trial ofOur Land here. Please check it out. And please also check out Davids new book: American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.

Donald Trump recently issued a statement on his strugglingTRUTH Social platform: Why are people so mean? This came in the middle of a conservative crusade to depict liberals and Democrats as nasty folks. Trumps remark captured the absurdity of this campaign. The fellow who routinely assails political foes and critics as losers, whose misogynistic history of denigrating women is unparalleled in American public life, who rose to the top of the GOP pile by disparaging the physical appearances of his opponents (and, in one case, the wife of an opponent), who railed against Muslims and shithole countries, who called for locking up his political rival, whoworships revenge and lives on spite, who denounced journalists as the enemy of the people, who relishes conjuring up ugly and dismissive nicknames for his political adversaries, whose entire political project is built upon denigration and vilificationthis guy complains about people being mean? And this list does not include his incitement of an insurrectionist riot or his attempt to destroy the foundation of American democracy.

Yes, you can chalk this up to Trump projection: his habit of accusing others of his own pathological sins. But his whine occurred as other right-wingers boo-hooed about President Joe Bidens recent blast at Trumpism. During a campaign rally in Maryland, Bidennotedthat Trump has embraced political violence andno longer believes in democracy: What were seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. Its not just Trump, its the entire philosophy that underpins theIm going to say somethingits like semi-fascism. Of course, the right went berserk over this.

A Republican National Committee spokesperson howled that Bidens comment was despicable. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu exclaimed that it was horribly inappropriate and urged Biden to apologize. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted that communists have always called their enemies fascists. (Biden is a communist?) But what to call a movement that denies election results, falsely claims an election was stolen, and refuses to admonish or excommunicate a leader who encouraged and used violence in his effort to overturn that election? In a flurry of unhinged tweets this week, Trump demanded his restoration to the presidency (a move impossible under the Constitution) and hinted that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago might spur his supporters to violence. That all sounds a bit fascist-ish.

Trump and his cultists are masters at the Im-rubber-youre-glue form of name-calling. Each day, I receive a bunch of fundraising emails from Trump or other Republicans lambasting evil Democrats as radical socialistsor communists pursuing devious plots to purposefully destroy America. In a recent request for money, Sen. Marco Rubio, citing the FBI raid, railed that the Biden administration was comparable to Marxist dictatorships. (As the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rubio ought to care about the handling of the intelligence communitys secrets. Yet he pounded the FBI for the raid, claiming in MAGA-like fashion that the bureau was doing more to erode public trust in our government institutions, the electoral process, and the rule of law in the US than the Russian Federation or any other foreign adversary.) During the 2020 campaign, Trump asserted that Biden was in league with antifa, Marxists, looters, anarchists, Black Lives Matter, terrorists, and radicals to demolish Americas suburbs, where a law-abiding citizen could easily become the victim of a very tough hombre. (Not too subtle, eh?) He portrayed Biden as an ally of far-left fascism. For decades, the GOP has depicted Democrats as an anti-American force (commies! radicals! subversives!) actively scheming to wreck the nation. Now they cry foul?

Alt-right (andwhite supremacy-supporting) Stephen Miller went bananas on Fox. Referring to the FBI search, hehuffed, What you are seeing is the classic technique of tyrants and authoritarians where they use the methods of dictatorships while accusing their opponents of being fascists. (Miller called the FBI raid an effort to seize and steal [Trumps] property and his documentsan utterly false characterization. The records belong to the US government, not Dear Leader.) Also on Fox, right-wing commentator Mollie Hemingwayharrumphedthat Bidens semi-F-word remark is more hateful than the worst thing Donald Trump has ever said. Last year Hemingway enthusiasticallytweetedout an article from the conservativeFederalistthat proclaimed Bidens vaccine program was a fascist move. Apparently, F-word for thee, not for me. And amid this kerfuffle, Trump posted a photograph of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which their faces were covered by the words Your enemy is not in Russia. In other words, they are your enemy. Not mean, right? Such meme-ing could well lead to violence.

One of the silliest retorts of the right came after Matt Lewis, a level-headed conservative columnist for theDaily Beast, posted a column that zeroed in on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz andasked, When did the GOP become the party of jerks? Right-wing writer Bethany Mandelreplied, If I had to pinpoint a moment, when Mitt Romney spent his entire campaign being accused of killing Big Bird, building binders full of women, torturing the family dog, etc etc. That certainly set off Twitter. She was suggesting that Trumps party was driven mad-mean because the Ds had been too rough on good ol Mitt.

Did Mandel forget that in the years prior to the 2012 campaign, Republicans and conservatives regularly accused Barack Obama of being a secret Muslim socialist who despised the United States and was conspiring to ruin the nation? Did she not watch the Tea Party rallies attended by John Boehner, then the top House Republican, where the crowd cried out, Nazis! Nazis, when Democrats were mentioned? Did she never view Glenn Beck on Fox, as he claimed the Obama administration was creating concentration camps and prominent Republicans appeared on his show to validate his conspiratorial lunacy? Nothing said about Romney matched the right-wing vitriol hurled at Obama. (At McCain-Palin rallies in 2008, Republican voters shouted out that Obama should be killed.) And also: Rush Limbaugh. By the way, Romney embraced this guy named Trump, the number-one birther.

On September 1, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Biden again addressed the issue of MAGA extremism in a formal speech. Noting that not every Republican is a MAGA Republicanwhich is a charitable position these dayshe declared, Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. He put it simply: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And theyre working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence. Factcheck: True. Biden did not use the F-word, but he fully and passionately explained how Trumpism presents a profound danger to the nation.

And this, too, triggered the Trumpers. Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump White House official,exclaimed, No Republican can feel safe in Bidens America. (Ask the 150 cops who were brutally assaulted by MAGAites at the US Capitol.) In pro-Trump internet forums, Biden was cast as Hitler. Ari Fleischer, the onetime White House press secretary who helped the Bush-Cheney administration lie the United States into the Iraq war,slammedBiden as the most divisive, over the top, rhetorically vile, bumbling, inarticulate president in history. Did Fleischer just wake up from a five-year coma? Whats more divisive than inciting political violence and purposefully doing nothing to stop it because it benefits you?

There has long been an asymmetry in American politics. The GOP, going back to McCarthyism, has wielded falsehoods and paranoia to cast its political enemies as malevolent and nefarious threats to the nationas literal enemies of the state. Democrats have tended to assail Republicans as being on the wrong side. And now we see that Trump and his Republican enablers are snowflake fascists. They hurl false accusations to demonize and dehumanize adversaries, plot against democracy, peddle outrageous lies to their followers,support dangerous and nutty conspiracy theories, andfan the flames of political violence. Then they moan when they are called out. Cmon now. Fascists ought to be made of sterner stuff. Perhaps thats why Biden called them semis.

Last issue, I wrote about the snowflake fascism of Republicans and conservatives. As I explained, Donald Trump and his cultists have long demonized liberals and Democrats, often calling them fascists (or subversives and enemies of America), but now they clutch pearls and express outrage when President Joe Biden warns that baselessly challenging and refusing to accept election resultsand inciting (or downplaying or dismissing) a violent insurrectionist attack that attempted to overthrow democracy should be seen as semi-fascism. This is obviously a disinformation tactic adopted by MAGA Republicans, and it is being deployed in tandem with another propaganda tool: gaslight fascism.

This is when authoritarians deny their own efforts to impose an authoritarian regime. The GOP has been engaged in gaslight fascism since the January 6 riot, refusing to fully acknowledge the assault for what it was: a rampage of domestic terrorists who had been directed by Trump toward the Capitol and who tried to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. With Biden raising the stakes by calling out MAGA Republicans as a fascistic force, these gaslighting efforts appear to have intensified. Which makes sense: The raid on the Capitol and the GOPs subsequent refusal to disavow the man who sparked this violence (and who this past week said he would considerfull pardonsfor convicted January 6 rioters, should he again be elected to the White House) are key components of Bidens compelling case for labeling the MAGA GOP a threat to the nation. To counter Biden and to claim thathe(not Trump) is the divisive force in American politicsTrump called Biden an enemy of the state at a rally in Pennsylvania this weekendMAGA-ites cannot admit the reality of January 6 and Trumps various schemes and actions to sabotage the 2020 election.

I encountered this directly after Biden delivered his recent speech at Independence Hall blasting MAGA Republicans, when I got into a Twitter dust-up with Ric Grenell, the combative and nasty (and apparently misogynistic) Trumpster who served as Trumps acting director of national intelligence for three months in 2020, despite his lack of experience in the intelligence community. Grenell contended that criticism of Trump and the Republicans for January 6 and the 2020 Big Lie was nothing but a Democratic attempt tocrush dissent.He insisted that Trump had done no wrong on January 6 and only had called fora peaceful protest. He asserted that the fact-based description of Trumps misdeedsTrump declaring victory with no basis for that claim, subsequently plotting secretly to overturn the election results, and then doing nothing when his mob attacked the Capitolwasfake history.

This was full-scale denialismso extreme as to be absurd. But this is how fascists and authoritarians debate. There is no real truth; there is only the self-serving truth they can concoct and enforce. George Orwell knew this. In1984, what is the apotheosis of the Partys desire to create a false reality? In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it, Orwell wrote. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.

Trump fascists have been trying to do the same with the 2020 election: conjure an alternative reality untethered from confirmed facts and declare it to be the partys truth. And in a two-plus-two-equals-five way, they transform a democracy-threatening authoritarian force into patriotic defenders of democracy. Grenell was casting the Big Lie brownshirts as heroic dissenters, not fascist thugs. More disturbing was that a pack of Grenells tweeps chimed in with assorted lies and distortions about the 2020 election and January 6. They were drowning in the Kool-Aid served by Trump, Grenell, and their co-conspirators.

This was not surprising coming from Grenell. Days after the 2020 election, he claimed that there had been widespread voter fraud in Nevada butrefused to provide evidenceto back up his assertion. (This allegation was judged apants-on-fire lieby Politifact.) And now he was presenting a clear example of the MAGA playbook: insist Trumps attack on democracy was no attack on democracy. With such a denial, it is far easier to blast Biden as a mean-spirited and divisive hater of MAGA. As former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley did,complainingof Bidens speech, Its unthinkable that a president would speak about half of Americans that way. You can only get away with this line if you ignore the fact that Trump has for years been accusing Democrats of seeking to destroy the United States. As I noted previously, during the 2020 campaign, Trump accused Biden of pushing far-left fascism. Did anyone get their knickers bunched over that? (By the way, Biden did not apply his warning to half of Americans. The number might be closer toa tenthof the population.)

The reality of Trumps conniving to subvert the republic cannot be recognized by leading Republicans. Doing so would create a dilemma for them. They would then have to explicitly declare themselves in favor of or opposed to this Trumpian war on democracy. They realize an outright expression of support for autocracy would not be good for the GOP, yet a declaration of opposition to the Trumpist assault on the Constitution would alienate any Republican from the partys cult-like base. (See Liz Cheney.) To survive within the GOP, they must deny. They must say black is white. War is peace. Authoritarianism is democracy. That is the only way the party can now exist. The logic of their position demands it.

The rest is here:
Donald Trump and His Two Forms of Fascism Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Back in 2017, Peyton Manning was warned not to play Golf with Donald Trump. However, he not only accepted Trumps invitation but also played a major role in helping him win.

Peyton Manning is one of the most well-known quarterbacks in the history of the NFL. In his almost two decade-long career, Manning shattered several records and ended up earning truck loads of cash.

Popularly known asThe Sheriff, Peyton, duringhis 14-year stint with the Indianapolis colts established himself as one of greats of the game. Moreover, he also spent 4 years with the Broncos where he won his second Super Bowl title.

As it turns out, along with being a terrific QB, Manning is quite good at Golf as well. Back in 2017, the champion QB helped Donald Trump to win a Golf contest.

Also Read: Lamar Jackson Deserves $500 Million Like Patrick Mahomes: HOF QB Steve Young Claims Ravens Star Has GOAT Potential

After the win, Manning went on Jimmy Kimmel Live where he talked in detail about his Golfing experience with the POTUS.When asked how he ended up playing Golf with $2 billion worth Trump, Peyton claimed that he was in town as he was set to receive the Lincoln Medal when he got a call from the White House.

They were like, the President would like to play Golf with you on Sunday, are you available? I have to tell you Jimmy that a lot of people asked me not to do it, Peyton claimed.

When Kimmel asked the NFL star to tell who exactly asked him not to play Golf with Trump, Manning replied, you know, you did.

Manning then went on to say that it turned out to be a fantastic experience. I never felt safer playing Golf. There were like 30 Golf carts behind me.

Talking about Trump, Peyton said, he love sports, he was a great host. It was just the experience of playing with the office that was pretty cool to me and I think it would have been almost Un-American to say no.

Kimmel then asked Manning if Trump cheated during the contest as Samuel Jackson once said that he cheats. As reported by Page.Six.com Jackson was asked who is a better Golfer between him and Trump to which he had replied, Oh, I am, for sure, I dont cheat.

Replying to Kimmels query, Manning stated that he actually counted the strokes and added that he would have surely called him out if Donald would have resorted to cheating.

Also Read: Arch Manning is to Peyton Manning and Eli Manning what Bronny James is to billionaire LeBron James

Here is the original post:
Despite being warned that $2 billion Donald Trump cheats, Peyton Manning went Golfing & helped the POTUS win - The Sportsrush

Prosecutors also added in another court filing unsealed Friday that the ongoing criminal probe into government records stashed at Trumps Florida home has involved a significant number of civilian witnesses whose safety could be jeopardized if their identities were revealed.

The partial release of the heavily-redacted affidavit and related court documents is the latest development in a fast-moving legal saga that poses an acute threat to the former president. Experts say it is unprecedented in nature. One classified information expert who oversaw such issues across the government said Friday that the scenario laid out was extraordinary and suggested that significant national secrets are at stake.

To my knowledge, this has never become an issue. Most former presidents have played this pretty straight and narrow, said William Leonard, who headed up the National Archives Information Security and Oversight Office. If it was just the infamous personal note from the North Korean leader to Trump and he refused to part with that, thats something that obviously could be handled administratively But I have to think in this instance the information was so sensitive and the potential damage to national security could be so significant that the government felt they had no other choice other than to proceed down this route.

The court filings unsealed Friday revealed that the magistrate judge who issued the warrant for the search of Trumps residence received legal arguments from Trumps attorneys before doing so.

Those arguments came in the form of a three-page, May 25 letter from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran. In the letter, Corcoran sought to discourage the Justice Department from proceeding with a criminal investigation or potential criminal charges over the presence of classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

Public trust in the government is low. At such times, adherence to the rules and long-standing policies is essential, Corcoran wrote. President Donald J. Trump is a leader of the Republican Party. The Department of Justice (DOJ), as part of the Executive Branch, is under the control of a President from the opposite party. It is critical, given that dynamic, that every effort is made to ensure that actions by DOJ that may touch upon the former President, or his close associates, do not involve Politics.

Notably, the letter came before a June 3 meeting between Trump, his attorneys and DOJ officials at Mar-a-Lago, where the departments counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt and FBI agents viewed parts of the premises. Trump has repeatedly described his interactions with DOJ as cordial, with aides noting that he shook hands with Bratt during the meeting. But those accounts didnt mention the heightened tensions reflected in Corcorans letter.

Similarly, Trump has described that DOJ asked him to install a lock on his storage facility after the June 3 meeting. But DOJ revealed in the affidavit that this request was delivered with far more alarm than Trump conveyed.

As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information, DOJ wrote in a letter to Corcoran at the time. As such, it appears that since the time classified documents [redacted] were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location.

Corcoran, in his May 25 letter, also argued that presidents have absolute authority to declassify documents, although he did not explicitly say that Trump had done so.

Some Trump allies have asserted that he explicitly or implicitly declassified materials by taking them from the Oval Office to the White House residence or other locations, though no evidence has emerged of a formal declassification order.

Indeed, the affidavit unsealed Friday contains a reference to former Trump adviser Kash Patel one of Trumps authorized representatives to the National Archives claiming in a Breitbart News article that Trump had declassified many of the records at issue.

In a post on his social media site, Trump lashed out shortly after the affidavit was unsealed, complaining of heavy redactions and noting that the word nuclear wasnt mentioned despite reports that documents related to Americas nuclear secrets were among the cache held at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, notably, didnt say whether or not such documents were in fact among them, only that there was no reference to them.

Trump also repeatedly slammed Reinhart for authorizing the search saying he should have recused himself from the matter. But Trump as both Reinhart and the Justice Department have noted in court filings never attempted to intervene in the matter to either help shape the redaction process, provide more insight on the documents he had at his estate or to formally seek the magistrates recusal.

In his own letter, Corcoran contended that a technical reading of one federal statute covering mishandling of classified information indicates it does not apply to the president. But he did not address whether or how a former president would also be immune from prosecution or retain some declassification power.

When prosecutors sought the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, they included Corcorans letter in their submission to Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart. However, they did not cite the criminal statute Corcoran referenced as a basis for the search. Instead, prosecutors pointed to possible violations of the broader-ranging and more severe Espionage Act, as well as criminal statutes covering theft of government records and obstruction of justice.

The Justice Department had grown alarmed this spring after learning from the National Archives that Trump possessed highly classified materials in a Mar-a-Lago storage room, some of which had been returned to the archives earlier in the year. But DOJ came to believe not all of it had been sent back. Trumps attorneys, meanwhile, delayed the FBIs access to the retrieved documents earlier this year, according to correspondence released by the Archives. Ultimately the department resorted to getting a search warrant in order to try and obtain the materials it believed remained at Mar-a-Lago.

The much-anticipated release of the affidavit behind that warrant came in response to an order from Reinhart, who partially granted a request from media organizations and a conservative group that the document be unsealed.

The Justice Department argued against making even a redacted version of the affidavit public, warning that redactions needed to protect the integrity of the investigation and to prevent harm to individuals would be so extensive as to render the document meaningless. However, the department elected not to appeal Reinharts decision to release a censored version of the affidavit to a district court judge or to a federal appeals court.

Prosecutors submitted proposed redactions to the court on Thursday morning and Reinhart concurred with all of them. In an order issued a short time later, the judge said that prosecutors had shown good cause to redact elements of the affidavit that would reveal the identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents, and uncharged parties, as well as the investigations strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods and grand jury information.

Some of the deletions are intended to shield investigators sources and methods for collecting evidence as part of their criminal probe into what Reinhart called the highly classified documents the FBI discovered at Mar-a-Lago. Both Reinhart and the Justice Department have noted an uptick in violent threats against those connected to the Trump probe as they laid out their rationale for redactions.

While the precise reasons for most of the specific redactions were not revealed Friday, at least some like withholding the name of the FBI agent who swore out the affidavit were withheld on grounds of agent safety.

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Trump Mara-Lago affidavit reveals 'handwritten notes,' highly classified material led to warrant request - POLITICO

President Joe Biden has mocked former President Donald Trump for claiming that he secretly declassified all of the classified documents that were recovered by the FBI during the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Biden cracked a smile and appeared to be close to laughing outside the White House on Friday after a reporter pointed out that Trump "said that he declassified all those documents" that are currently the subject of a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation.

The president dismissed a question on whether Trump had the power to "just declassify them all" by mockingly stating that he had just "declassified everything in the world," while also insisting that he was "not going to comment" on the matter.

"Well, I just want [you] to know I've declassified everything in the world!" Biden said after grinning. "I'm the president, I can do it all! C'mon! Declassified everything... I'm not going to comment, because I don't know the detail. I don't even want to know, I'll let the Justice Department take care."

When asked if it was "ever appropriate" for a president to take home "classified and top secret documents," Biden said that it depends on "the circumstances." He was not asked whether it was appropriate for a president to keep classified documents at home after leaving office.

Biden said that he was taking home his own daily intelligence briefing on Friday but stipulated that he had a "completely secure" area that he would be reading it in while accompanied by a member of the military and would be returning the document to military personnel just after reading it.

Multiple boxes of classified documents, including some marked "top secret" and some that reportedly may have included nuclear secrets, were recovered during the August 8 raid.

Biden has insisted that did not know about the raid ahead of time and that he is not involved in the ongoing DOJ investigation into whether Trump's taking of official documents broke multiple federal laws including the Espionage Act.

Trump has called the raid a "break-in" in multiple Truth Social posts and suggested that Biden was involved in planning the raid and what calls a "political Witch Hunt" targeting him.

On Friday, the former president expressed outrage over the release of the redacted affidavit that was used to justify the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. Trump had demanded that the full, unredacted version of the affidavit be released instead.

The DOJ opposed releasing the affidavit over concerns that it could jeopardize an ongoing investigation and the safety of witnesses, including confidential informants in Trump's orbit, at risk.

The version that was released on Friday following an order from Judge Bruce Reinhart was heavily redacted and obscured any clues about the identities of the informants.

However, experts including Trump-friendly former attorney Alan Dershowitz have said that the affidavit likely gives the DOJ enough evidence to indict the former president, if an indictment is pursued.

Trump lashed out at the redactions on Truth Social soon after the affidavit was released, accusing the federal authorities of participating in "public relations subterfuge."

"Affidavit heavily redacted!!!" Trump wrote. "Nothing mentioned on 'Nuclear,' a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover - WE GAVE THEM MUCH. Judge Bruce Reinhart should NEVER have allowed the Break-In of my home."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.

Original post:
Joe Biden Mocks Donald Trump Over Claim He 'Declassified Everything' - Newsweek

UPDATE (Aug. 26, 2022, 12:44 p.m. ET): The Justice Department on Friday unsealed a partially redacted copy of the FBI affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month.

Theres been a flood of information in recent weeks about Donald Trump, the classified materials he took to Mar-a-Lago, the National Archives, and the Justice Departments investigation, but there was one recent detail about Attorney General Merrick Garland that warranted some follow up.

According to a New York Times report published two weeks ago, shortly before Garland delivered public remarks on the controversy, announced plans to unseal the warrant related to the former presidents Florida property, a person close to Mr. Trump reached out to a Justice Department official to pass along a message from the former president to the attorney general.

The Times added that the Republican wanted the attorney general to know that FBIs search had enraged the nation, and Trump wanted to know what he could to to reduce the heat.

I had quite a few questions about this, some of which, oddly enough, were answered this week by Trump himself.

On Monday, the former president and his lawyers asked a judge to order the appointment of a special master to oversee the handling of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, but as part of the court filing, Team Trump also shed some light on events that happened behind the scenes.

According to the former presidents own version of events, on Aug. 11 two weeks ago today one of Trumps lawyers had a phone conversation with Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national security division of the Justice Department whod been involved in the investigation. This weeks court filing added that the first item of discussion was a message Trump wanted to convey to the nations chief law enforcement official:

President Trump wants the Attorney General to know that he has been hearing from people all over the country about the raid. If there was one word to describe their mood, it is angry. The heat is building up. The pressure is building up. Whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know.

In other words, according to Team Trump, the Times reporting was exactly right.

That said, the scenario described in the filing hardly does the former president any favors. Garland delivered public remarks on Aug. 11. According to Team Trumps version of events, that same day, before the attorney general spoke, the Republican had one of his lawyers deliver a message to a top Justice Department official, with the expectation that it would be conveyed to Garland directly.

The message wasnt an explicit threat, per se, though Trump wanted the attorney general to know that, as far as the former president was concerned, the nation was outraged by the execution of a court-approved search warrant. Trump was apparently concerned about the consequences of the heat and pressure.

Part of the problem with this is that Trumps concerns about national stability were obviously insincere: The former president lashed out wildly at law enforcement before Aug. 11 helping create much of the anger referenced in his message and his rhetoric became even more caustic in the days that followed Garlands remarks.

But lets also not miss the forest for the trees. Facing an intensifying federal investigation, and just days after the FBI executed a search warrant at one of his properties, Trump thought itd be a good idea to deliver a message to the attorney general with an ominous warning about rising heat and pressure ... building up.

Thats not based on claims from unnamed sources; thats what happened according to the former presidents own court filing.

I dont think weve heard the last of this one.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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Busted and panicking: Trump sent apparent threat to Attorney General after search - MSNBC