The FBI Desperately Wants to Let Trump Off the Hook
Adam Serwer The AtlanticALSO SEE: Showdown Before the Raid: FBI Agents and Prosecutors Argued Over Trump
He just won’t allow it.
This morning, The Washington Post reported that FBI investigators clashed with federal prosecutors over the decision to search the former president’s residence, where highly classified documents were found despite Trump’s insistence that he had none.
“Some of those field agents wanted to shutter the criminal investigation altogether in early June,” the Post reported, adding that FBI agents were “simply afraid” and “worried taking aggressive steps investigating Trump could blemish or even end their careers.” The FBI did not exhibit this worry in 2016, when it publicly announced that it was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified documents, an announcement that, even with all the other mistakes her campaign made, likely cost Clinton the election. That decision was made in part because then-Director James Comey feared that pro-Trump FBI agents would leak the details if he did not announce them publicly. The federal investigation into the Trump campaign, by contrast, was properly kept confidential until after the election. As one agent told the reporter Spencer Ackerman in 2016, “The FBI is Trumpland.”