and this is the ingraham angle from parts unknown. all right. i have been doing a lot of thinking today. january 6th, i think, should be celebrated by deep sea fishermen across the united states because we now know that the capitol riot was the pretext for the government to launch a giant fisher expedition against conservative trump supporters. according to documents obtained by congressional investigators after january 6th, the feds coordinated with banks to track purchases of customers by using key words related to our 45th president. now, just as we predicted back in early 2021, the liberal permanent bureaucracy used the events of january 6th to go far beyond run-of-the-mill prosecutions for trespassing or vandalism or assaulted. their goal was a lot more ambitious. it was to intimidate, to smear, to hound, and surveil trump supporters, even if they weren t on site. and even if they hadn t committed any acts of violence. now, remember, the only person killed that day was
proceedingag exceedingly carefully, and they were worried about the political implications of provoking the former president. and all this resulted in very heated battles between the fbi and justice department prosecutors who were advocating a more aggressive strategy to try and retrieve those documents down at mar-a-lago. according to the washington post it was only after a series of intense negotiations with justice department prosecutors that the fbi eventually moved forward with its search 467 and all along the way in spite of all the evidencee to the contrary, the fbi continued to give trump and his legal team the benefit of the doubt. the washington post reports some fbi field agents wanted to shutter the investigation all together in early june after trump s legal team asserted a diligent search had been conducted. but according to the washington post, the just department prosecutors continued to push for a search of mar-a-lago. those prosecutors were ultimately vipdicated
in court in response to a motion filed by mr. trump. it was not a leak. it was not a leak. full stop. that was one of many exchanges from merrick garland s testimony on capitol hill, and we ll have more on what happened in that strange and contentious hearing later on in this hour. one of the consistent themes we ve been hearing from republicans to ted cruz is the idea the fbi is now hell bent on taking down donald trump, the fbi has somehowdo caved to democratic political pressure and is part of a partisan scheme to destroy trump s political process. so it was notable on the very same day as this hearing was happening on capitol hill that we goten this brand new piece o reporting from the washington post in detailing exactly what s happening inside the fbi and justice department ahead of last summer s search of stmar-a-lago. and that reporting makes it clear thator the fbi had, in fa,
succumbed to some political pressure. but it wasn t pressure to investigate or damage donald trump. it was the opposite. fbi agents investigating the former president s retention of classified documents had been intimidated by trump s relentless attacks over the years and basically cowed into operating withwe extreme cautio. this is a quote from the piece. justice department prosecutors learned fbi agents were loathe to conduct ats surprise search. they heard from top fbi officials that some agents were simply afraid. they worried investigating trump could policemen blemish or even end their careers. one official dubbed it the cross fire hurricane. the fbi, the same fbi that certain republicans have been attacking was not chomping at the bitno to raid donald trump beach house mansion. instead the agency was
troubling thing to s learn, and think the does have an impact on the investigation. what how do you read? when i finished story i thought thest fbi or doj, everyone s operating out of an abundance of caution here. there was a whole series of negotiations. theyres waited until they had effectively an airtight case to pursue this searchir of mar-a-lago. if anything it refutes the idea that the fbi, the doj is somehow weaponized against trump. so wouldn t that lay the foundation for a charging decision that could potentially indictia the president or do yo think it s something else? this isn t the reporting shows a thoughtful deliberation that you just went through. i don t think this is about whether sort of the facts are ultimately drawing a particular conclusion. it s p the fact that deliberati discussions like this, they re