Ex-FBI official thinks Trump's surveillance footage 'flipped the switch' for DOJ to issue search
Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi has remained cautious when talking about the FBI and Justice Department's deliberative movements dealing with Donald Trump. But in his most recent panel discussion with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday, Figliuzzi indicated he was frustrated with how slow they moved when it comes to the classified documents sitting in Mar-a-Lago.
"So, for those of us sitting at home trying to figure out what was the switch that flipped and got them to the search warrant? What was it that happened, and I think it's a myriad of things," Figliuzzi. "There are human sources because we know from filings there's references repeatedly to witnesses who have been interviewed, so that's great, but I think one of those so-called witnesses was the surveillance camera footage. I think what they saw was, you know, no surprise here, that they couldn't trust Trump. By that I mean by then a couple of locks had been slapped on the storage room door, right? So, everything's supposed to be fine. While we continued to nicely, civilly discuss and negotiate whatever's going to happen."
But the surveillance cameras showed that there were people coming in and out of the rooms and changing out boxes and containers that the boxes were in.
"So, that gets us, Nicolle, into this whole issue of why were they charging falsification and destruction or masking of evidence? Well, that's part of it, I think. It's not just the trump lawyer who filed a form saying, 'You've got everything. We gave you everything. There's no more.' It's also, I think, the storage room surveillance footage that says — no, darn it, they're not securing the room," he continued. "And by the way, they seem to be moving stuff out. And by the way, they seem to be changing the containers that documents may be in. There's that going on here as well. We can see where they're getting to the statute. The statutory elements may have been met. We can see what may have flipped the switch in part to get to a search warrant."
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He also cited the New York Times report that said Trump personally went through the documents in Jan. 2022, after spending months negotiating with the National Archives about whether or not he'd turn over the documents.
"Let's talk about this. Let's look at it himself. Here's what that does. It takes away this defense that, you know, 'The movers did it. I didn't know anything about this. I had no knowledge of this,'" Figliuzzi cited as some excuses Trump might use. "They were told, repeatedly, how significant these documents were for national security. And he knows it. So, again, we're getting into that statute for espionage."
He then explained Trump qualifies for espionage under the law by being able to prove "willfulness, intent, I know it's here. I know it's highly classified. I'm being told I need to return it, and by god, I'm not doing it. And by the way, I'm probably lying to you about whether I've turned it all over."
That, he said, is the statutory element of willfulness and intent that is required under the espionage laws.
But it was when he turned to talk about those who are criticizing the government for the search that he made it clear he took issue with the slowness.
"I'm going to criticize something here about the timeline. It was too darn slow. It was too slow," he began. "So, when you have a Jan. to May timeline before the FBI is getting their hands on this and doing an assessment and figuring out — look, if you've handled a lot of top secret documents — especially special access, each page numbered, marked, sometimes each page initialed, there must be something missing. They may have been — they could have looked. If they had looked at it earlier and seen it earlier there are documents, and pages missing. Something's wrong here. There's something not right. Why are we missing that photo that's supposed to go with that document? There's things not right here, and then, boy, there's live sources somewhere maybe that are being compromised right now."
See the full statement below or at this link.
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