Generally, one can be taught so much from a Freedom of Info Act request that comes up empty. Take this new NBC Information report, for instance:
The FBI has mentioned it may discover no data associated to former President Donald Trump’s assertions in November that he “despatched within the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys” to cease “poll theft” in Florida in the course of the 2018 election. In a letter dated March 6 and obtained this week by NBC Information, the FBI wrote that it had searched its Central Data System however was “unable to establish data” in response to a reporter’s Freedom of Info Act request looking for any data associated to Trump’s claims.
I’ve a hunch most conventional folks received’t bear in mind what led to this FOIA request, so let’s take a short stroll down reminiscence lane and revisit our protection from final fall.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cruised to a simple re-election victory within the 2022 elections, and shortly after, a lot of the political world began speculating concerning the Republican governor’s probably presidential marketing campaign. It was round this similar time when Trump, aggravated that an understudy may intervene together with his ambitions, began taking not-so-subtle rhetorical pictures on the Floridian.
However that’s not all the previous president did. He additionally tried to argue that DeSantis would’ve misplaced in 2018 had been it not for Trump’s post-election intervention.
“[A]fter the Race, when votes had been being stolen by the corrupt Election course of in Broward County, and Ron was taking place ten thousand votes a day, together with now-Senator Rick Scott, I despatched within the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the poll theft instantly ended, simply previous to them operating out of the votes essential to win,” he claimed by means of his social media platform. “I finished his Election from being stolen.”
In different phrases, in keeping with the previous president, he discovered of a secret scheme being hatched by corrupt election officers he didn’t establish, which led him to secretly deploy FBI brokers and federal prosecutors to the Sunshine State, at which level the key plot was secretly thwarted with out anybody noticing.
This was a narrative he needed the general public to consider and take critically. There was no indication that Trump was kidding.
Quickly after, officers in Florida — and on the Justice Division — mentioned they’d no thought what the previous president was speaking about, and now a Freedom of Info Act request confirms what we beforehand assumed: There’s merely no proof that Trump did what he claims to have finished.
One of many bizarre issues a couple of story like that is that Trump has engaged in every kind of abuses, a few of that are the topic of ongoing prison investigations. However that is an occasion through which he successfully confessed to an abuse that occurred solely in his odd creativeness.
Certainly, if Trump, throughout his presidency, truly dispatched FBI brokers and federal prosecutors to intervene with Florida’s election tallies in 2018, that will itself be worthy of its personal investigation. There’s no want for such a probe, nonetheless, as a result of it now seems he merely peddled a delusional story he concocted for no motive.
All of which ends up in the opposite related angle: In the case of voter fraud claims, Trump simply makes stuff up. These inclined to genuinely consider the previous president’s nonsensical election tales ought to take word.