Bob Unruh served up some performative pro-Trump outrage in a May 21 WorldNetDaily article:
The FBI’s shocking armed raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida after he finished his first term in the White House remains one of the stunners of the Joe Biden era at the federal agency.
Officers marched onto the property, demanded compliance with their orders for privacy and a video security system, scattered government documents on the floor and photographed them, and then took boxes and boxes – apparently snatching some of Trump’s private belongings.
This all happened because the leftists at the National Archives apparently colluded with the Biden White House to assemble a criminal case against Trump – at a time when his representatives apparently were trying to work out all of the disputes that were involved in ownership of documents from his presidency.
Now it’s gone further.
A lot.
Investigative journalist Julie Kelly, who has pursued the misbehaviors of the Biden administration diligently, has discovered from government documents that the FBI agents in the raid were authorized to use “deadly force when necessary.”
That would have been one way, although extreme, to assure the Democrats victory in their lawfare campaign to try to prevent Trump from challenging the “diminished” Joe Biden for the White House this year.
Actually, that could have made the subsequent “lawfare” cases unnecessary.
Unruh won’t tell you that Kelly is so far right and so rabidly pro-Trump that even the conservative National Review has called out her dishonest tactics. He also wont tell you there’s a simple explanation that blows up his conspiracy theory: it’s a standard clause in any such operation that’s also in the FBI’s justice manual, and it’s more a reminder that the use of deadly force is limited rather than a blanket authorization.
But Unruh is not about to let a little thing like the truth intrude on his conspiratorial narrative. The next day, he called on more unreliable sources to perpetuate the conspiracy:
The FBI now is claiming that Joe Biden, whose actual knowledge of and involvement in that agency’s armed SWAT-style raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home never has been fully explained, didn’t know that Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized those agents to use deadly force if they thought it was needed.
The bureau, according to the Gateway Pundit, has released a statement in response to the scandalous news confirmed a day ago that those “deadly force” authorizations were given to FBI agents raiding Trump’s home.
The FBI said it, “like other law enforcement agencies, requires the team leader of any search warrant or arrest warrant to complete a standardized form known as an ‘Operations Plan.’ This form, which also must be read by the team leader to all assisting agents, is a reminder of the FBI’s deadly force policy. This is a legal requirement to be included on all Ops Plans and read to agents immediately preceding the enforcement action. The President (Biden) has nothing to do with, and has zero input on, an Ops Plan. This is an internal law enforcement document and a standardized form that FBI lawyers require before engaging in any enforcement operations.”
Nonsense, charged Dan Bongino, a popular commentator and former Secret Service agent who worked in the Barack Obama White House.
He said the revelation absolutely is “a big deal.”
“Don’t buy the bullsh** otherwise. It was not a standard op. The MAL raid was an unprecedented action with significant potential for confusion and blue on blue issues and conflict. It also involved competing equities between federal agencies (FBI & USSS) with equal statutory claims to interrupt the other’s activities. Anyone telling you otherwise is either dumb, or playing dumb. I’ve done more deconfliction with Russians in a foreign op I did for the USSS than the FBI did in their search warrant at MAL. Only a dumba** would pitch the ‘it’s the standard paperwork’ line. Go serve a search warrant at the White House in the cocaine case while filling out your ‘standard paperwork’ and see how that works out for you. Wake up.”
Bongino hasn’t worked for the Secret Service for more than a decade — which he quit rather than do his job and protect then-President Obama — so he’s not exactly a reliable source.
But Unruh wasn’t done spinning right-wing conspiracy theories about the Mar-a-Lago raid. he served up one more questionably sourced claim in a May 22 article:
Reports that the FBI authorized agents who were involved in that infamous raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home to use “deadly force” as needed have triggered a resurgence of reports about just what the bureau was seeking there.
The publicly stated concern was over documents from Trump’s presidency that he still had. But Joe Biden had classified documents from his days as senator and vice president, and there was no raid. And Mike Pence had documents from his vice presidency and there was no raid.
Perhaps the target was a binder including documents from the government’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, that fabricated claim that the Trump campaign in 2016 was colluding with Russians, a claim that was sponsored by Democrats involved in failed presidential bid by Hillary Clinton, claims that were later debunked by special counsel Robert Mueller.
A report at the Gateway Pundit pointed out sources, months ago, charged that that “missing top-secret binder” that could link Barack Obama directly to the conspiracy against Trump, was being sought.”This document is rumored to contain damning evidence of former President Barack Obama’s CIA’s involvement in initiating the Russia collusion narrative against President Trump. Fox News host Jesse Watters discussed these details on his show, citing reporting by investigative journalists Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi,” the report said.
Unruh didn’t mention that the 2016 Trump campaign had dozens of contacts with Russian operatives, then-campaign manager Paul Manafort gave internal polling data to another Russian operative, and that Russia rooted for Trump to win in 2016 — which means there was reasonable suspicion about Trump ties to the Russians that were certainly not “fabricated.”
The binder conspiracy is bogus too. As a more trustworthy news organization reported, the binder in question — which was last seen in the custody of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — actually disappeared during the final days of the Trump administration, though redacted version of the binder exist. One of Trump’s final acts as president was to order the declassification of the binder’s contents, but national security officials continue to oppose their release out of fear of exposing sources and methods. The unredacted binder has yet to be found, and it was not recovered during the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Rather than tell his readers the truth, Unruh simply rehashed his conspiracy theories from previous articles — which is stenography, not journalism. Unruh simply could not be bothered to do any sort of fact-checking on the claims of these unreliable, highly biased conspiracists.