As the scandal, corruption, legal peril, and investigations continue to mount all around Donald Trump, explosive new reporting from CNN has now busted the ex-president paying a key potential witness in both the January 6th and the Mar-a-Lago documents case more than $7,000, just 11 short days after his Palm Beach compound was raided by the FBI on a search and seizure warrant handed down by the US Justice Department.
CNN’s Erin Burnett reports, “Tonight, Trump was handed a loss by the special master that he put forward for the job and it’s a pretty significant loss because [Special Master Raymond Dearie] is calling Trump’s bluff by questioning the very heart of his argument in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.”
“Trump has, for weeks — again and again, any time he spoke publicly — said that he declassified the more than 100 documents seized in the FBI search,” the CNN host goes on to add. “But there’s never been any evidence or anyone who has come to verify that and the special master is now saying that unless he receives any evidence to back up that claim that Trump is publicly making, he will consider all of the information marked classified to be classified.”
Following the initial reporting on the news, Burnett Burnett interviewed former Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who gave her analysis of the scandalous revelation.
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“If I know Donald Trump, he’s going to tell them to lean into the fact that they were declassified,” Grisham confirmed. “I know he has said that he had told Kash Patel that they were declassified, but I think it’s important for just your viewers, the country, to understand that that’s not how it works. You don’t just say the words, these are now declassified and it’s done. There is a process. And more importantly, people, agencies would need to be told, right? The CIA, the DOJ, the FBI, the people who have sources and methods out there. They would need to know that, hey, these documents are suddenly declassified so that they can move those sources around.”
This week, Donald Trump’s “Save America” PAC revealed a suspicious payment made to Kash Patel’s consulting firm, Trishul LLC.
The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger reported on that revelation, “Kash Patel makes his first appearance on Trump’s payroll — $7,500 on Aug. 19.”
Grisham didn’t miss a beat in opining that Patel and many other close Trump insiders would, without a doubt, publicly testify that the now ex-president did declassify the documents that he stole from the White House — even if they know full and well that it means they would be lying.
“We point back to the magic wand you and I talked about before,” the former Trump press secretary explained. “He just looked at Kash and said, ‘Hey, these are all declassified,’ that’s it? It doesn’t work that way. Now if the president names names of people who actually witnessed it, then those people will have to come forward and say under oath the truth that that’s the truth.”
“Do I think there are people who would maybe do that for him, even if it wasn’t true? Sadly, I do,” Grisham confirmed.
See the reporting from CNN and Grisham’s subsequent analysis here:
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
