Is Fox News host Steve Doocy the latest spokesperson for the Justice Department? There are times when I wonder, given his intractable defense of the illegal raid of Mar-a-Lago on August 8. Doocy has pushed back aggressively on Republican guests who have accused the Department of Justice of running amok and engaging in gross prosecutorial overreach with this raid on the home of a former president. He questioned Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) about who went rogue at the DOJ when executing the search warrant. He told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) that it was a “big deal” that nuclear secrets were at the residence.
Fox’s Doocy surprisingly presses Rep. Steve Scalise on FBI agents receiving death threats due to baseless GOP attacks over lawful Mar-a-Lago search.
— The Recount (@therecount) August 11, 2022
Scalise: “It concerns everybody if you see some agents go rogue.”
Doocy: “Who went rogue? They were following a search warrant.” pic.twitter.com/3CayQaYaaP
Fox News' Steve Doocy on nuclear documents reporting: "That's kind of a big deal!"
— The Recount (@therecount) August 12, 2022
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY): "We do not know the facts, which is why it's important to follow the facts..."
Reality: Following the facts is exactly what the DoJ and FBI seem to be doing. pic.twitter.com/yL2O5gS9WZ
There were never classified nuclear materials at Mar-a-Lago. It’s not mentioned in the affidavit that provided probable cause for the raid. The facially untrue leak from the DOJ pointed to this ransacking being a politically motivated hit job that some at Fox News don’t seem to comprehend. Now, Doocy wondered why Trump had all this secret material at his home when discussing the raid with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (via Business Insider):
"Fox & Friends" host Steve Doocy is the latest media ally of former President Donald Trump to call him out over the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago.
During a Wednesday episode of the show, Doocy asked South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another Trump ally, for her take on the Mar-a-Lago raid — but not before wondering aloud why Trump didn't hand over the documents to the government and instead took them to his Florida home.
"Well, ultimately it comes down to — why did he have all that secret stuff at Mar-a-Lago?" Doocy asked.
He referenced Trump's claim about declassifying the files through a standing order and pointed out that this defense didn't hold up as the supposed move was also "news to the agencies that those documents belong to."
"He had, apparently, three classified documents in his desk," Doocy said, referring to the DOJ's court filing on the raid.
Doocy also referred to a photo released by the DOJ of the top-secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
"It shows five yellow folders marked 'top secret,' and another one with that says 'secret SCI' which means 'sensitive compartmentalized information,'" Doocy said. "Those are the biggest secrets in the world."
Someone tell Doocy that Congress virtually accepts that former presidents will leave with classified materials. It’s why they have a federally funded staff with security clearances and Secret Service protection once they leave office. The president has near-absolute authority to declassify anything, which Trump did, and took copies of the records with him. To argue that Mar-a-Lago wasn’t secure under the auspices of the Secret Service is abjectly absurd. Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch, has torched every supposed legal reasoning offered by the Justice Department. He concludes that Attorney General Merrick Garland and his minions just have a fundamental and horrid misunderstanding of the law regarding the classification powers of the presidency. Then again, the legal verbiage that wasn’t redacted in the affidavit wasn’t meant to show the public that the raid was justified. This was Joe Biden and the Democrats going after their political enemies.
Does that not bother Doocy that nothing in the affidavit even met basic mens rea requirements concerning criminal intent? The latter isn’t even mentioned in the document.
Also, it seems as if some have forgotten that presidents handle classified information. No president can ever be charged with mishandling classified material. The fact that some of the files seized were TIME magazine covers points to the FBI executing another shoddy attempt to entrap the former president. The White House dinner menus are a state secret in the eyes of the FBI. Please, we all know they were looking for documents to corroborate the January 6 riot or the Russian collusion circus—and they came up with nothing.
