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Photo by Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images
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Q&A on the FBI’s Search of Mar-a-Lago
Summer is usually a slow time for political news. But it hasn't been politics-as-usual for quite some time.
Even so, few were prepared for the news that broke on Aug. 8, when the FBI executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.
The unprecedented search of a former president's home was carried out all day and into the early evening before the publisher of a Florida political website broke the news -- via tweet, of course.
"Scoop — The Federal Bureau of Investigation @FBI today executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, two sources confirm to @Fla_Pol. 'They just left,' one source said," Peter Schorsch tweeted at 6:36 p.m. "Not sure what the search warrant was about. TBH, Im not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down, but its real."
The search warrant wasn't made public, and the FBI declined to comment. But Trump's son, Eric, told Fox News that the search concerned documents sought by the National Archives. Multiple news organizations have reported that the FBI is investigating whether Trump took classified documents with him when he left the White House and potentially mishandling them.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Aug. 11 confirmed that the FBI searched Trump's home.
The search of Mar-a-Lago raised a number of questions, which we address in "Q&A on the FBI's Search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago Home."
Why did the FBI search Mar-a-Lago? What’s the legal process for obtaining a search warrant on a former president’s home? Who has to approve such a warrant? What laws pertain to mishandling presidential records? Would Trump be barred from holding federal office if he were to be convicted of violating these laws? These are the questions we fielded.
A word of caution: This is a developing story with a lot of unknowns. Our article covers what we know so far, and will be updated accordingly.
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In writing about Sen. Rick Scott's exaggerated and misleading claims about the Democratic-sponsored Inflation Reduction Act, Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley cited four expert sources on federal tax and budget policies: Two nonpartisan government offices (the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation) and two outside sources (the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Tax Foundation). Read more.
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Last year, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would target between a 50% and 52% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. The Rhodium Group, a research firm, said its “preliminary estimate is that the [Democratic-sponsored Inflation Reducion Act] can cut US net greenhouse gas emissions down to 31% to 44% below 2005 levels in 2030 … compared to 24% to 35% under current policy.” Read more.
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Climate scientist Michael E. Mann, who had published the famous “hockey stick” graph of spiking world temperatures in the 1900s, will become director of the University of Pennsylvania’s new Science, Sustainability and the Media program in September.
Mann, who had been a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, has been a frequent source for FactCheck.org. We've cited him in more than a dozen articles.
In a Q&A with the Philadelphia Citizen, Mann gave a shout out to FactCheck.org and our parent organization, the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
"[O]ne of the really exciting things about Penn, what lured me away from the Happy Valley, is the Annenberg School [for Communication] and Annenberg Public Policy Center, all of that infrastructure for science communication. Annenberg in particular has played such an important role in pushing back against disinformation," Mann said. "I love the fact that factcheck.org originated there. I’ve had quite a few experiences with people there on the issue of climate change."
You can read the Q&A with Mann here.
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Reader: A friend sent this to me: 100,000 ppl coming across the southern border each month.
FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: Your friend is right. It’s actually more than that.
As we wrote last month in “Biden’s Numbers (Second Quarterly Update),” apprehensions at the southern border totaled 2,216,791 for the past 12 months ending in June, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s nearly 185,000 per month. It’s also 336% higher than during former President Donald Trump’s last year in office.
Not all those apprehended are allowed to remain in the United States. In fact, most are immediately turned away and returned to their home countries. Some of those apprehended are repeat offenders. We covered that in our article “Cotton Distorts Border Apprehension Impact.”
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Wrapping Up
Here's what else we've got for you this week:
- “Four False Claims About Monkeypox": Monkeypox is a viral disease that spreads through close physical contact with an infected person. A recent meme on social media gets the facts wrong about how the virus spreads, its severity and symptoms.
- "Scott Overstates Tax Increases in Inflation Reduction Act": The Inflation Reduction Act proposes to raise over $700 billion in new revenues over 10 years to be spent on energy, climate change initiatives, health care and deficit reduction. But not all of those revenues come via higher taxes. More than half comes from health care savings and from beefed up IRS tax enforcement.
- "Social Media, Politicians Make Unfounded Claims of Politicized Mar-a-Lago Search": FBI agents searched the home of former President Donald Trump in Florida on Aug. 8 looking for presidential records and classified materials that were improperly removed from the White House. Social media posts claiming the FBI search was politically motivated have been swirling online, despite there being no evidence that President Joe Biden “had his department of justice’s FBI raid” Trump’s home, as one viral post claimed.
- "Proposed ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ Includes Grandfather Clause, Contrary to Social Media Posts": The House passed a bill on July 29 that would make it a crime to knowingly “import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon.” Social media posts falsely claim “millions of people will become felons overnight” because of the bill. Under the bill, current owners of such firearms would be allowed to keep them.
- "Online ‘Stimulus Loan’ Offers Are Not Related to Government Programs": Three stimulus payments have been sent to Americans to ease the economic impact of the pandemic. Social media posts are now sharing a false claim about a new, $40,000 federal stimulus loan. But it’s a marketing ploy. The bottom of the web page says, “This is not a government program nor is it government aid, this is an advertorial for a loan service.”
- "Posts Make Unfounded Claims About Death of Al-Qaeda Leader": The U.S. announced it had conducted a drone strike on July 31 killing al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul. But social media posts make unfounded claims that al-Zawahiri had died in 2020 from asthma. The posts cite an unconfirmed story in a British tabloid, which reported a year later that al-Zawahiri was still alive.
- "Trump Rally Photo Is From 2020, Not Recent Wisconsin Rally": Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Wisconsin on Aug. 5. Posts on social media circulated a photo to claim that the recent Trump rally in Wisconsin attracted a “massive” crowd. But the photo was from a previous Trump rally and was shared by Eric Trump in 2020.
Y lo que publicamos en español (English versions are accessible in each story):
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