Trump statement today: Ex-president pleads fifth amendment 440 times as Trumpworld hunts Mar-a-Lago raid informant

Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell, who for assorted reasons has become a focal point for right-wing outrage (including graphic death threats targeting him and his family), has been speaking out loudly against Donald Trump ever since the Mar-a-Lago raid came to light. And in the face of hysteria on the right about the FBI’s supposed attempt to smear Mr Trump, he has this corrective:

Facing a grand jury probe in Fulton County, Georgia, where authorities are investigating his efforts to pressure state officials into overturning Joe Biden’s victory, Donald Trump is lawyering up – and true to a pattern set over his decades moving in glitzy circles, his choice of lawyer comes from the world of celebrity rather than the world of politics.

Multiple Fox News hosts have this week helped spread both unsubstantiated claims about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid and furious rhetoric directed at the agency itself, as well as at the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland specifically.

However, not all hosts are on board – and when offered the chance to quiz House Minority Whip Steve Scalise this morning, Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy demanded to know why he was jumping to conclusions without evidence.

The judge who signed the warrant granting the FBI permission to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has instructed the Department of Justice to respond to a request to unseal it.

Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered on Wednesday that “on or before 5:00pm Eastern time on August 15, 2022, the Government shall file a Response to the Motion to Unseal. The response may be filed ex parte and under seal as necessary to avoid disclosing matters already under seal. In that event, the Government shall file a redacted Response in the public record.”

The decision does not guarantee that the warrant will be unsealed in its entirety, but does at least raise the possibility that it may be made public within a week despite Mr Trump’s reticence to share it.

Donald Trump’s recent campaign-style video that he posted to his social media platform Truth Social appears to feature a song titled after the slogan of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The former president on 9 August posted the nearly four-minute-long video on Truth Social. According to an analysis from media watchdog Media Matters, the music used in Mr Trump’s video “is a song titled Wwg1wga, produced in 2020 by an artist using the name ‘Richard Feelgood’ on Spotify”.

The acronym “wwg1wga” is shorthand in the QAnon community for the slogan “Where we go one, we go all”.

Maroosha Muzaffar has more:

Mick Mulvaney, who served as acting White House chief of staff in the later phase of the Trump administration, has told CNN that he thinks Donald Trump “probably should” go ahead and unseal the warrant for the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago on Monday.

Mr Mulvaney argued that the secrecy around major grand jury investigations is “real, it’s valid, it’s there for a reason” – but also diagnosed recent events as “beyond the ordinary course of business” and suggested that “everybody” involved in the case, involved Mr Trump, to be as transparent as possible.

It is entirely within Donald Trump’s power to release the FBI’s warrant for its raid on Mar-a-Lago on Monday, but he has so far declined to do so for unspecified reasons. That leaves his critics, members of Congress and journalists to demand its release – or, in the case of the New York Times, to take legal action to secure access to it.

In lieu of releasing the warrant that gave the FBI permission to raid Mar-a-Lago – as it is within his power to do – Donald Trump has been periodically issuing various claims about how the raid came about and what the agents who carried it out actually did.

Here’s his latest narrative of what happened, delivered last night on Truth Social.

The complaint that agents acted “without notification or warning” misses the point of a warrant to look for allegedly concealed material, a search that by definition requires law enforcement to act without notifying those suspected of concealing it. (Of course, Mr Trump might very well understand this.)

Fox News’s radicalisation has reached a new peak in the wake of Monday’s events at Mar-a-Lago, with hosts and guests propagating false and questionable narratives about the raid and calling for investigations of the federal law enforcement architecture simply because Mr Trump’s home was searched.

One of the network’s contributors, Jessica Tarlov, dared to go out on a limb on The Five last night – but when she called on her fellow commentators to stop projecting “mistruths and assumptions” that are also being shared by Mr Trump, she found herself in a shouting match with co-host Jeanine Pirro:

Sravasti Dasgupta reports.

Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday declined to answer over 440 questions during a deposition with investigators working for New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office, instead choosing to invoke his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination each time.

According to multiple reports citing sources familiar with what happened during the Wednesday session, Mr Trump only answered one question — he provided his name when asked after he was sworn in as a witness.