Neil W. McCabe Talks FBI Raid, Covering Ron DeSantis

Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed The Tennessee Star’s former national political editor Neil McCabe to the newsmaker line to talk about his move to Florida and covering the recent FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Leahy: On the newsmaker line, the great Neil W. McCabe, formerly our chief Washington correspondent. Now he’s moved up in the world. He’s with One America network, and now he’s covering the DeSantis administration in Florida.

So, Neil, you move to Florida. Two days later, the FBI raids Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. These two obviously are connected. Why did you do it?

McCabe: (Laughter) Obviously, I cannot comment at this time. My representatives will have a prepared statement. I … (cross-talk, unintelligible) a wild and scurrilous charge that I categorically deny.

Carmichael: That’s pretty good.

Leahy: What’s it like in Florida covering DeSantis?

McCabe: It’s wild, because he just dominates the state politically. I don’t think Rick Scott or any other figure in Florida history has really dominated … you’d have to go back to Governor Reubin Askew, who was the governor here in the ’70s and early ’80s.

Carmichael: Who Askew? (Chuckles) 

Leahy: So have you had an interview yet with DeSantis?

McCabe: I’ve not interacted. I’ve met with his people. One of the first things I did was meet with members of his team, and I’ve also talked to people on his campaign team. So obviously there’s a Chinese wall between the two of them.

DeSantis does have no primary challenger in the August 23 primary here in Florida. But what is going to happen is that the school boards are up in Florida, and that’s going to be across the state.

And Florida has been ground zero in the fight about parental rights. And DeSantis is really making an effort to support conservatives and parents in those school board fights.

The problem is because there’s no primary for DeSantis there’s no primary for Marco Rubio on the Senate side. The fear is that Republicans won’t show up. So that’s why they’re sort of trying to kick things into gear.

Of course, then also there’s the fact that the former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, lives here, and his home at Mar-a-Lago was raided by the FBI.

Leahy: Okay, so now give us some insights into that. Like I said, just within hours of your move to Florida, this raid happens. When did you find out about it? What was your reaction?

What can you tell us about the raid and the – ostensibly, they got some magistrate judge that nobody ever heard of to sign a search warrant. And so tell us what you’ve discovered on that.

McCabe: I got a text from somebody in Trump’s world Monday afternoon, and from what I understand, this warrant was a pretty wide-ranging warrant. And the agent told the Trump lawyers that they could basically go anywhere, look anywhere, and they basically tore the place up.

And while the agents were going through the offices and the residence of Mar-a-Lago, they made Trump’s lawyers wait outside. They didn’t even allow them to come in.

And it’s like 100 degrees outside, and they basically left the lawyers sweating outside, just as a way to kind of stick it to them. Mar-a-Lago, the club and resort itself is closed for the summer because the heat is unbearable.

It really functions as a winter resort, right? So that’s why President Trump and his operation is in Bedminster, New Jersey, and he was at Trump Tower, of course, when the thing went down.

What’s interesting is that in February, National Archives said that they had seized 15 boxes. There’s this number, 15 boxes. In February, they said that 15 boxes were taken by the National Archives and brought back to Washington from Mar-a-Lago.

This is February, and yet now they’re talking about 15 boxes. So I think there’s some confusion over what’s going on, because it was big news in February that the archive had taken back things from Mar-a-Lago.

So I think that there’s a deliberate conflation of these two stories. And so I really wonder if that raid has anything to do with what’s going on with the National Archives. Because everything that the National Archives wanted, it took in February. And they’ve been working with the president.

They’ve been allowed to come and go. The president’s lawyers have said that there are no problems. Anything they’ve ever asked us, we’ve done. And in February, they made a point of taking back – President Obama left a letter for Trump; basically, that thing that you do, that you leave for your successor, and the Archives made a point of seizing that, telling Trump he couldn’t even keep that.

Leahy: This all sounds very punitive. Now, my question. Andrew McCarthy, actually, wrote at National Review, he said that this was not really about the Presidential Records Act, this was a fishing expedition in order to get January 6 material that they want to use to charge Trump and indict him on the January 6th statement. Did you see that at all, or do you hear any about that?

McCabe: Well, this is as I’ve looked into it, I’m looking, and I’m trying to figure out why would there be a problem with the National Archives? Because the National Archives, as I said, they made a big production of going down there in February.

So I think that there’s a deliberate conflation and confusion. The problem that the January 6 people have, and the problem with all the other people who are going after the president for January 6, is that no one has made a connection between the Trump campaign, the White House – personally, there’s no connection between Trump and his team and the guys who showed up at the Capitol with bullhorns and crashing the gate. And remember that when the guys were crashing the gates at the Capitol on January 6, Arizona was being debated in the House and the Senate because the Trump team had a plan to decertify Arizona and a number of other states.

So the fact of the matter is that the rioters who crashed the gates of the Capitol disrupted Trump’s plan to decertify states. They’re asking you to believe that Trump ordered a mob to disrupt his own plan.

Leahy: Which doesn’t make any sense. Buck Sexton yesterday on his show said that a Trump world attorney, who is no longer working with Trump, said he believed that there is a sealed indictment against President Trump already and that this raid was to gather evidence for that sealed indictment. What are your thoughts on that?

Listen to the interview:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.