MAGA pretends to misunderstand this routine investigative move - MS NOW

Republican lawmakers have been criticizing former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining some of their phone toll records in his 2020 election interference investigation. Yet it’s a routine step in criminal probes to secretly get such records, which don’t capture the substance of conversations like wiretaps do but rather show which numbers were in contact at certain points in time.

Regarding the nondisclosure orders his team obtained with those records, Smith explained to lawmakers that “there was a grave risk of obstruction of justice, given the obstructive conduct of President [Donald] Trump as is set forth, for example, in the indictment in Florida,” referring to the other case he brought against Trump, related to classified documents.

Both of Smith’s cases vanished with Trump’s 2024 election win, due to the Justice Department’s policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. But instead of leaving the dismissals as windfalls for the president and trying to move on, Republicans have been keeping the memory of Trump’s alleged criminality alive by attacking Smith and other government workers associated with the efforts against the revenge-minded president.

The latest example, MS NOW reported Wednesday night, is that the FBI “has fired at least 10 agents and support staff over allegations that they obtained phone records connected to FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles” as part of the classified documents probe. Patel called it “outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight.”

But like the complaints from GOP lawmakers, Patel risks conveying a misleading impression about these routine requests while simultaneously drawing further attention to Trump’s alleged criminality. The president pleaded not guilty in all four of his criminal cases, with only his New York hush money case having gone to trial before the 2024 election (and ending in a conviction that’s on appeal). Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled this week that Smith’s report on the documents case should stay secret.