FBI rat would have to be someone ‘very close’ to Trump, Mulvaney narrows it down

Former Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney bluntly stated that whoever attempted to rat on former President Trump would have to be “very close” to him and know where he was storing documents at Mar-a-Lago.

(Video Credit: CNN)

“I didn’t know there was a safe at Mar-a-Lago and I was the chief of staff for 15 months,” Mulvaney told CNN’s “New Day” in an interview.

“This would be someone who was handling things on day to day, who knew where documents were, so it would be somebody very close inside the president, my guess is there’s probably six or eight people who had that kind of information,” he contended.

Newsweek reported earlier in the week that the raid at Mar-a-Lago was sparked by an unnamed informant who told the FBI there were documents still in Trump’s possession and where to find them. The Wall Street Journal reportedly confirmed there was a “rat” in Trump’s inner circle.

If true, it would be nothing new as numerous individuals have betrayed the former president while in and out of office. Many of them have done so for monetary gain. The media has lapped up every single bit of it.

The raid follows Trump previously turning over 15 boxes of documents to the National Archives. His attorneys were working with federal authorities regarding other items. That evidently wasn’t enough and someone ran to the DOJ and the FBI claiming there were other documents at the private club. There is no indication that anything of note was found during the raid.

Two months prior to the raid, FBI officials requested that a stronger lock be installed on the room where Trump stores documents. The former president reportedly complied with that request.

To many, the raid looked like a fishing expedition that was politically motivated to keep Trump from running for the presidency in 2024. Thirty FBI agents showed up at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence with a warrant while he was out of town. They searched the premises for over nine hours, breaking into Trump’s safe, which was allegedly empty, and then pawing through former first lady Melania Trump’s wardrobe.

Mulvaney, who is no longer in touch with Trump, called for calm from both sides over the incident.

“Maybe the best thing for everybody to do right now in order to calm things down and sort of reset the playing field is for Trump to come forward with the search warrant that he received and the receipt of the documents that were taken, and the DOJ to come forward with the affidavit that they swore out to a judge,” Mulvaney commented, attempting to straddle the political divide.

Mulvaney locked horns with CNN host Brianna Keilar, calling the raid over documents “absurd.”

“You folks know I’ve been critical of the president’s conduct on January 6th,” Mulvaney remarked. “But if it is just about documents, that’s almost absurd. That’s the same thing that the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton for, and I don’t remember them invading her home. If you are Republican, the reason you’re asking to act the way you are, the last 48 hours, is that you really do feel like you’re not getting fair treatment from your own government and that’s a very dangerous place to be.”

“But there are pictures of documents Donald Trump flushed down the toilet,” Keilar protested. “Does he not get the benefit of the doubt as well?”

“Sure, I think that’s worth investigating,” Mulvaney replied. “Keep in mind, what was that piece of paper? It had Elise Stefanik’s name on it.”

“Mick, we can’t — in fairness, Mick, it was torn up,” Keilar objected. “We don’t know what was on it. That’s just a fact.”

“It says Stefanik on it,” Mulvaney repeated.

“One word, it said a lot of other — we don’t know what the whole document said,” Keilar disingenuously pointed out. “You can see Stefanik’s name was on there but you can’t extrapolate from just one word.”

“I’m not defending destroying documents,” said Mulvaney. “I don’t think this was related to the Presidential Records Act directly. It is not a criminal statute. It is in code 44 of the USC, not 18, the criminal statute. I’m not really sure how the Presidential Records Act ties in. Yes, the president has to keep almost everything, but not everything when you are the president. Again, if we’re talking about documents, that’s part of my point here, Brianna. You just invaded the home of a former president of the United States, to look for documents? Why was it so important? Why couldn’t it be handled by a subpoena?”

Axios published images from a forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman earlier in the week purportedly showing two sets of notes stuffed into toilets, one of which is said to be a White House bathroom and the other from a bathroom on a presidential foreign trip. To many, the accusation lacks credibility and the pictures look staged.

Trump proceeded to call Haberman a “maggot” over the accusation and heatedly denied flushing the documents.

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