The right's post-Mar-a-Lago effort to impugn the FBI kicks up a notch

[Nevilledog]

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Philip Bump
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Trump spent years disparaging the FBI in case they targeted him. So his base was ready to treat the Mar-a-Lago raid as political.

Now Trump is claiming that the FBI maybe is planting evidence. I wonder why?

washingtonpost.com
Analysis | The right’s post-Mar-a-Lago effort to impugn the FBI kicks up a notch
Trump and his allies are now suggesting, without any justification, that perhaps the FBI was planting evidence.
10:05 AM · Aug 10, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/10/trump-fbi-search-republicans/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/elAbr

*snip*

It is certainly true that law enforcement officers have in the past planted evidence on suspects. But the idea that they would do so in this context makes no sense. They took a dozen boxes of material; if the agents at the scene wanted to inject something incriminating, there were plenty of opportunities to do so once they’d left Mar-a-Lago. After all, planting evidence at a crime scene would generally be done with aim of convincing other officials not in on the scheme that it was there all along. If all the officials are in on it, there’s no such need. And if all of the agents weren’t in on the alleged nefariousness at Mar-a-Lago, the problem would be being spotted by other agents more than Trump’s attorneys.

All of this runs the obvious risk of treating this insinuation as in any way credible. It is not, even in Bobb’s vague formulation. There is literally no reason to think that the FBI wanted to add anything to the evidence that wasn’t already present. Asserting that there is reason to think so requires that you believe (or want others to believe) that the bureau is inherently corrupt and out to get Trump, which is begging the question.

Anyway, it got worse. Another Trump attorney, Alina Habba, appeared on Fox News Tuesday night with host Jesse Watters. Watters, whose track record of accuracy is not spotless, quickly elevated the idea that the FBI was up to something.

“What the FBI is probably doing is planting evidence, which is what they did during the Russia hoax,” he said. “We also have a hunch they doctored evidence to get the warrant — again, what they did during the Russia hoax.”

Watters’s hunch should be considered as strongly correlated to demonstrated reality as I should be considered a contender for this year’s Cy Young Award. Yes, an FBI official pleaded guilty to altering an email used in a warrant application, but he avoided jail time in part because a judge believed the claim that the information he added was accurate. The “planting evidence” statement is a reference to a complicated assertion made by special counsel John Durham that’s never been substantiated. But each is a good example of how isolated, decontextualized claims targeting the FBI have propagated through the conservative bubble with the central aim of casting the bureau and not Trump as the dubious actor.

*snip*

[SheltieLover]

1. He knows the repukes are taking him down because he will not win in '24.

[randr]

2. So fucking what

There are a lot of people in jail due to planted evidence and they are not concerned about them are they.

[Walleye]

3. So did they also plant classified material on Hillary's emails?

And if they are going to plant something, could they please make it definitively incriminating

[Novara]

4. Just remember, kids: EVERY ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION

[musclecar6]

5. Never

Stops trying to be a modern day Hitler and unleash a vengeance on all those who had wronged him. How stupid can his base be that they can’t see this guy for who he is ?