Trump Distorts Facts in Pennsylvania Rally

As the Department of Justice investigates his handling of highly classified documents, former President Donald Trump spoke for nearly two hours in a rally in Pennsylvania that was filled with false, exaggerated and misleading statements:

• Trump falsely claimed that DOJ used a “phony pretext” to search his Mar-a-Lago property. Trump and his staff repeatedly thwarted efforts by government officials to recover all documents for more than a year before DOJ resorted to seeking a search warrant.
• The FBI didn’t “stage” a photo to “pretend” that Trump left classified documents on the floor of his Mar-a-Lago office. The seized documents were found in a container, but were placed on the floor so agents could photograph them as evidence, officials say.
• Trump falsely claimed that an FBI investigation into whether his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia was “developed by Hillary Clinton,” his 2016 opponent. The probe was launched when a Trump campaign adviser told a foreign official that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton.
• Trump made numerous false statements about Clinton’s use of a private server while secretary of state. There’s no evidence that Clinton’s emails were “plundered by foreign hackers” or that she deleted emails and “smashed” cell phones to destroy evidence, as Trump claimed. 
• He repeated (and repeated) his false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.”
• He exaggerated both how low gasoline prices got during his presidency and how high they then became under President Joe Biden. And in any case, experts told us neither president had much to do with the price fluctuations.
• Trump falsely claimed that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg “confessed” that Facebook censored posts in response to the FBI feeding Facebook “the false narrative that the Hunter Biden laptop from hell was Russian disinformation.” Zuckerberg said the FBI only warned Facebook officials generally about Russian propaganda.
• He said Biden “should have never left [Afghanistan] without keeping Bagram [Air Base].” But when he was president, Trump reached an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw American forces from all bases in Afghanistan.
• Trump falsely claimed he “ended” Nord Stream 2, a pipeline from Russia to Germany, and that Biden “opened up the pipeline.”
• No one has authorized “87,000 IRS agents” to “carry guns” and “go after you,” as Trump claimed. The bureau may hire that many employees over the next 10 years, but the majority won’t be tax auditors or “special agents” who carry firearms, officials say.

Trump made his remarks Sept. 3 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, at a campaign rally for the state’s Republican candidates for governor and U.S. Senate. The rally came less than a month after FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. 

No ‘Phony Pretext’ for Mar-A-Lago Search

: “There could be no more vivid example of the very real threats from American freedom than just a few weeks ago, you saw it, when we witnessed one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history. The shameful raid and break in of my home, Mar-a-Lago, was a travesty of justice that made a mockery of America’s laws, traditions, and principles before the entire world. … On a phony pretext, getting permission from a highly political magistrate who