As RedState reported on Monday, Donald Trump accused the FBI of taking his passports during the unprecedented raid of his Florida residence. According to the former president, three passports were taken during the search, which apparently went far beyond just recovering supposedly classified documents that threatened “national security.”

Predictably, after Trump made the claim, the press quickly jumped into the fray to call him a liar. Norah O’Donnell of CBS News claimed via a source that the FBI was “not in possession of former President Trump’s passports.”

NEW: According to a DOJ official, the FBI is NOT in possession of former President Trump's passports. Trump had accused the FBI of stealing his three passports during the search of his Mar-a-Lago home.

— Norah O'Donnell 🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) August 15, 2022

When I saw that report from O’Donnell, I put out my own post questioning the phrasing. “Not in possession of” is very specific wording that could have simply meant the FBI had passed them on to another agency. Why not just say “we didn’t take the passports” if they didn’t take the passports?

Well, as it turns out, Trump’s team was ready and waiting with the receipts that showed the press narrative was a falsehood.

This is how Fake News works, folks. Biden admin actively feeds half truths & 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? https://t.co/DlzkagN0ie pic.twitter.com/VwCU7DPCvg

— Taylor Budowich (@TayFromCA) August 15, 2022

Incredibly (or perhaps not so), instead of admitting their mistake, members of the press rushed out to somehow make the revelation about…Trump’s supposed dishonesty.

So Trump team now publicizing this email, which shows:

1) DOJ obtained three passports (two expired, not one, as Trump said) and alerted Trump lawyers
2) They were recovered by a filter team, which weeds out privileged info.
3) Trump publicized this after DOJ offered them back pic.twitter.com/lz8wneIQ0a

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 15, 2022

So let me get this straight. The FBI did indeed seize Trump’s passports, which seems incredibly improper given what was legally allowed to be taken by the warrant, and that’s somehow his fault? A passport is not something you just accidentally grab, thinking it’s a presidential record. It’s the kind of thing that an agent purposely took and knew exactly what they were taking. Yet, the big gotcha here is that Trump was wrong about the expiration date on one of the passports. It’s absurd.

The big story here is that the FBI took the passports in the first place. It is not that Trump shared an email that ended up embarrassing the bureau’s leadership, who were apparently content to keep lying about the matter via leaks until the former president exposed them. Now, the mainstream media wants to pretend like the seizure was just an honest mistake that shouldn’t be held against the FBI. Yeah, that’s not how any of this works.

Trump: “They stole my passport.”

Liberals: “Trump is lying.”

FBI: “We took his passports and are returning them.”

Liberals: “See? Trump always lies.”

WHAT?

— Bob Weave (@lowkeyrbe) August 16, 2022

The press and the DOJ working together to push a false narrative isn’t surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less improper and corrupt. There need to be answers provided for how the FBI ended up with Trump’s passports when they obviously weren’t part of what was sought and allowed to be taken in the warrant. O’Donnell and the rest of the press who ran with that lie that the FBI didn’t have the passports also need to answer for why they swallowed a statement from the DOJ without even bothering to get any corroborating details.

With every passing day, the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago looks worse and worse. We are living under a regime that prides itself in operating like a banana republic. The dishonesty of those always out to get the orange man knows no bounds.