Last March the Washington Post published an exclusive story about the behind the scenes arguments that took place prior to the search of Mar-a-Lago. The gist of the piece was that DOJ prosecutors, led by Jay Bratt, were eager to get a search warrant and have the FBI carry out an unannounced raid. This all came to a head during an early August meeting where the head of the FBI’s Washington, DC field office, Steven D’Antuono, pushed back.
Steven M. D’Antuono, then the head of the FBI Washington field office, which was running the investigation, was adamant the FBI should not do a surprise search, according to the people…
Tempers ran high in the meeting. Bratt raised his voice at times and stressed to the FBI agents that the time for trusting Trump and his lawyer was over, some of the people said. He reminded them of the new footage suggesting Trump or his aides could be concealing classified records at the Florida club.
D’Antuono and some fellow FBI officials complained how bad it would look for agents with “FBI” emblazoned on their jackets to invade a former president’s home, according to some people with knowledge of the meeting…
Later, D’Antuono asked if Trump was officially the subject of the criminal investigation.
“What does that matter?” Bratt replied, according to the people.
As we all know, the DOJ got their way. D’Antuono was ordered to have agents search Mar-a-Lago and they did so, though without the blue and yellow FBI jackets agents often wear.
D’Antuono has since retired and today NBC News published its own exclusive version of the story, recounting the same meeting between the FBI and DOJ prosecutors which preceded the search. NBC’s version seems to be based mostly on D’Antuono’s recollections and it has a different flavor from the earlier Post story. This time we learn there was concern at the FBI field office that the DOJ’s approach might be motivated by politics.
Several FBI agents in the Washington field office were concerned about the aggressive tactics and political donations of Jay Bratt, one of the Justice Department prosecutors.
According to public records, Bratt, who now works for special counsel Jack Smith, had donated $600 to a former DOJ colleague’s unsuccessful Democratic primary campaign for the U.S. Senate in Oregon in 2007, $150 to the Oregon Senate Democratic Campaign Committee that same year, and a total of $500 to the Democratic National Committee in 1993 and 1994.
Bratt didn’t response to a request for an interview but NBC cites an unnamed DOJ official who swears that Bratt never displayed any political bias. Still, D’Antuono felt he was being unnecessarily aggressive. He preferred to continue working with Trump’s attorney to arrange some kind of consensual search of Mar-a-Lago.
“Jay was being a little overly aggressive,” D’Antuono recalled. “The aggressiveness that was there, from day one.”…
D’Antuono saw Trump as most likely motivated by a desire to show off the classified documents.
But Justice Department officials and some FBI officials believed that Trump’s continued possession of the documents was a direct threat to national security.
The meeting broke up after an hour with neither side changing its position. D’Antuono said he would need to be ordered to carry out the raid or he wouldn’t do it. Bratt also didn’t budget and wanted them to carry out the search ASAP. After it was over, the FBI agents were talking about the meeting when they noticed something in the draft of the proposed search warrant they hadn’t seen before.
They noted that the draft search warrant included a potential criminal charge against Trump that they did not recall seeing before: Section 2071 of Title 18.
The law made it illegal for an individual who possesses government documents to “willfully and unlawfully” conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify, or destroy them. If a person is convicted of the charge, they shall “be disqualified from holding” any federal office.
“The barring from office charge,” D’Antuono recalled. “People saw that charge as ‘Aha, is that DOJ’s effort to get Trump?’”
The day after the meeting, D’Antuono got a scolding note from a DOJ official who’d joined the meeting by phone. “You and your leadership seem to have gone from cautious to fearful,” it said. D’Antuono felt he was being called a chicken and was angry about it. But a day later FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate ordered D’Antuono to carry out the search. The DOJ won the argument and the search was carried out about a week later.
