"The DOJ and FBI just returned my passports," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Thank you!"
"Unfortunately, when they raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, 8 days ago, they just opened their arms and grabbed everything in sight, much as a common criminal would do," Trump's announcement persisted. "This shouldn't happen in America!"
Trump first raised the matter of his passports being "stolen" from his home Monday night, and NBC News Norah O'Donnell tweeted a claim to the opposite — which would eventually prove misleading.
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"NEW: According to a DOJ official, the FBI does NOT have former President Trump's passports," she announced. "Trump had accused the FBI of stealing his three passports while searching his Mar-a-Lago home."
After O'Donnell's tweet, Republicans and defenders of the former president stressed her tweet "not in possession" missed the real news that the FBI or DOJ did indeed seize three Trump passports as he argued.
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"This is how Fake News works, folks," wrote Taylor Budowich, Trump's Save America PAC director of communications, in a tweet linked to a redacted email from a DOJ official acknowledging the seizure of the passports. "Biden admin actively feeds half-truths and lies that the media willingly amplifies — advancing a partisan narrative to attack Trump. @NorahODonnell, did your 'source' read you this email? Did you bother asking if they indeed seized the passports?"
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And Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell, announced that O'Donnell propagated a falsehood.
"38k people fed fake news and Norah still hasn't corrected it 14 hrs later," Grenell tweeted.
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Twitter fact-checked O'Donnell's tweet hours later, stressing that "the passports were taken."
"@NorahODonnell got a warning label for pushing fake news and @maggieNYT got a Pulitzer for it," Grenell tweeted, taking a shot at The New York Times's Maggie Haberman for her years of reporting about Trump.
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Former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka declared that the FBI's acknowledgment that it returned the passports has revealed the weakness of the search.
"The fact the FBI got caught lying about stealing his passports. And then had to give them back. Means they have nothing," Gorka tweeted.
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One longtime Democratic strategist warned that if the FBI's Mar-a-Lago search fails to turn up any proof of a serious offense, it could energize the GOP's ultra-conservative base and potentially erode Democrats' backing among moderates wary of government overreach.
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"If there's nothing significant here and it appears to be political persecution, you're going to have a huge backfire that motivates the Trump base and the conservative base, and also has some unintended consequences with moderates," the strategist announced.
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