Trump admin was so worried about classified info it referred 334 cases to DOJ for prosecution: report

Donald Trump and his most fervent supporters have freaked out after FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, but when he was in office he took a far different view on classified information.

When he announced the FBI action, Trump said "these are dark times" and claimed it was "political persecution" that he was reportedly under investigation for mishandling classified information.

"The FBI search really is evidence of a leak investigation — perhaps the biggest in history," James Risen reported for The Intercept. "But in legal terms, the case doesn’t appear that different from the many leak investigations that Trump’s own Justice Department aggressively prosecuted throughout his time in office."

Risen, who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting at The New York Times, waged a seven-year battle that started in the George W. Bush administration after the DOJ attempted to force him to reveal a source. Risen ultimately prevailed.

"In fact, Trump put enormous pressure on the Justice Department to pursue leaks of classified information while he was president, usually related to negative disclosures in the press about him," Risen reported. "Many of the people charged in cases involving leaks of classified information during the Trump administration came in connection to disclosures in the press about Trump or Russia, or both. The Intercept reported last year that the Trump administration had referred a record of at least 334 leaks of classified information to the Justice Department for criminal investigation."

Despite the hypocrisy, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) have called for Republicans to "totally gut" and defund the FBI.

Republicans escalated their rhetoric after the FBI also served a search warrant to seize the cell phone of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA).

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