Former senior FBI and intelligence officials express alarm over President Trump's upcoming address, citing a pattern of actions that they say undermine democratic institutions and election integrity.
As President Trump prepared to deliver a prime-time address to the nation on Thursday, former senior FBI and intelligence officials expressed grave concerns that his speech, touted as emphasizing free and fair elections, would instead be an attack on democracy itself.
Trump demanded network air time for a 9 p.m. address on what he claimed was a matter of national importance, but networks had not yet committed to carrying it. Those who have worked at the pinnacle of law enforcement saw something else afoot.
A retired profoundly worried FBI official told the Daily Beast that if they were still working a terrorism investigation and saw a network coming together and getting into key positions, gathering information and materials needed to carry out a plot, those would be called warnings and indicators. The official said Trump's address was shaping up to be profoundly dangerous.
They detailed a growing list of warnings and indicators, starting with the replacement of Paul Brown as special agent in charge of the FBI Atlanta Field Office. Brown's sin was expressing reservations about the Department of Justice's decision to investigate the 2020 election, which Trump insists was rigged. He wouldn't go along with it, so they pushed him out, the official said.
The list continued with the 2023 indictment of Trump and 18 others on state charges of attempted retro-rigging of the 2020 election results. Evidence included the recorded phone call where Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.
Four defendants pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Trump, but charges were dropped late last year amid suggestions of a conflict of interest by lead prosecutor Fani Willis. Two months later, in January, two dozen FBI agents served a criminal search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center, though the warrant specified the wrong location, causing a delay while a judge corrected it.
Agents seemed in no rush, and Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett suspected they were waiting for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to be present when the FBI carted away 750 boxes containing over half a million ballots and other records from the 2020 election. Gabbard turned up despite legally having nothing to do with domestic law enforcement.
Barrett told the Daily Beast they probably took their time because they were waiting for Gabbard to arrive and skulk around in a baseball cap. Exactly why the head of national intelligence was there on a domestic matter involving an election six years ago remained a mystery. One guess involved Gabbard's past bonkers suggestion that ousted Venezuelan director Nicolas Maduro could control voting machines in American elections. Former FBI officials said Maduro central to the effort.
Another mystery was a July 17 deadline given to over 250 FBI agents and analysts dispatched to Fulton County to review records. Barrett said they were waiting to see what that deadline brings, but added there really is no criminal case available to them, so she couldn't imagine what they would say on July 18.
The Department of Justice also sought personnel records of everyone who worked in the 2020 election in Fulton County, including phone numbers and home addresses, but Federal Judge William Ray, a Trump appointee, denied the request, calling it an arbitrary fishing expedition and stating such a large disclosure threatens to chill participation in future elections. As Trump's address approached, the pattern of actions by former officials and current investigators raised alarms about the integrity of democratic processes and the potential for misuse of law enforcement powers to overturn election results
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