A witch hunt. Political persecution. An attack from the "radical left."
The rhetoric with which former President Donald Trump colored the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate has, for a month, sung a familiar tune. But the details emerging from the investigation itself - and the general mood toward the search - have remained anything but static.
A trickle of court documents has exposed a criminal investigation far beyond the scope and severity that Trump espoused when he decried that his Florida estate was "under siege" as he brought the "unannounced raid" by the FBI to national attention.
One month after the Aug. 8 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, the release of various documents has unearthed a treasure trove of details - many yet to be uncovered - about the former president's handling of government records likely far beyond what even Trump could have imagined when he opened Mar-a-Lago's doors just weeks ago.
"It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024," Trump wrote on the day of the search, giving life to a political firestorm that would engulf Washington and beyond for the next month.
The intervening time has produced a seismic shift - from evolving Trump explanations to the response of his allies and supporters to the available details of the investigation itself - which are just beginning to paint a picture of the former president's conduct and the potential repercussions.
It's a far cry from where things first stood, when Trump's voice alone began shaping what had occurred that day in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump molded a martyr - claiming he had been "cooperating with the relevant Government agencies," later suggesting that the documents had been planted by federal agents, and deflecting by posting various questions about why the government had not searched the home of former President Barack Obama, who he claimed took millions of pages of documents. That led the stridently apolitical National Archives in a highly unusual move to issue a statement fact-checking Trump and insisting those records were stored and maintained consistent with the law.
It would be only the first of many in an evolving explanation for whether and why the former president possessed government documents, some of which were later understood to be marked as classified - ranging from confidential to top secret - and commingled among personal belongings.
Quick to come to his aid with a chorus of condemnation were conservative commentators who echoed his message and high-ranking GOP lawmakers, while Trump's supporters clamored outside of Mar-a-Lago in what appeared to be unwavering enthusiasm for the former president, no matter the implications that remained at large.
While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said DOJ "has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization," pledging to conduct immediate oversight if the Republicans take control of the House come November, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted frantic tweets calling for the FBI to be defunded, for President Joe Biden to be impeached and insinuating that the U.S. was entering a civil war.
"We are coming," she said.
"The big immediate response was back to the 'witch hunt' days," Michael Binder, a University of North Florida professor of political science says. "There was very clear lining up, full-throated support for the former president and viewing him very much so as a victim of an overreach from an aggressive DOJ."
But that response would appear to be undercut with the emergence of each new revelation.
"As more details have come out about the legal process leading up to the search, and about what seemed to be contained at Mar-a-Lago, there has been a much lower volume of Republican complaints, both in terms of the number of people speaking about it and the level of anger they're directing at the FBI and the Department of Justice," says University of Miami Department Chair of Political Science Gregory Koger.
Days after Trump made the search evident, as threats of violence began to crop up across the country, Attorney General Merrick Garland took the rare step of announcing that the Justice Department had asked a federal court to make public the search warrant granting the FBI access to Mar-a-Lago, citing a "substantial public interest in the matter."
"I think it was quickly obvious to Republicans that their rhetoric was having a real effect at encouraging attacks upon federal officials," Koger says. "So that, combined with Merrick Garland's speech, led them to dial it back."
The outrage from Trump allies that had been so strong coming out of the gate had begun to simmer, perhaps as the severity of the situation began to set in - that this was more than Trump allegations but a full-fledged investigation. And the receipts were coming.
Still, some stuck to their guns, claiming that the investigation was politically motivated and an "abuse" or "overreach" of the agency's authority, while others struck a notably different tone - pledging support for rank-and-file members of the Justice Department and condemning an attack on an FBI office in Ohio.
Former Vice President Mike Pence urged his fellow Republicans to stop lashing out at the FBI over the search in mid August, criticizing Republican calls to defund the FBI as antithetical to the party's belief system.
"The Republican Party is the party of law and order," Pence said at a political event in New Hampshire. "Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police."
But the release of documents that seemed to quiet Republicans was only beginning. And in the days of anticipation ahead of a key document's release, Trump went to work.
As a judge weighed the release of the affidavit - expected to shed light on why law enforcement sought a search warrant for Trump's Florida home and the evidence that gave them probable cause to do so - the former president and his team peppered supporters with fundraising emails - at one point sending close to 30 in a 24-hour window - offering signed photos, signed golf hats, signed golf flags and invitations to become an "Ultra MAGA member" in exchange for contributions to his Save America PAC.
Pull Quote Enhancement : "It's hard to be both an advocate for law and order and saying that Donald Trump should be able to flout laws."
And the efforts appeared to be paying off as reporting shows that Trump raked in $1 million a day on at least two days in August in the wake of the FBI executing the search warrant on his Mar-a-Lago residence - an event that's now likely to be the central campaign theme should Trump decide to run again for president in 2024.
"Without notification or warning, an army of agents broke into Mar-a-Lago," Trump wrote to supporters in August. "A surprise RAID, POLITICS, and all the while, our Country is going to HELL at the hands of the Democrats."
Despite clear opposition to the search from Trump, the former president's legal team still had not weighed in by court filing as the end of August approached, while Trump's voice reverberated through posts on his social media platform and in his fundraising emails. But on Aug. 22, the team made its first filing - to a different judge than had been handling the case at Mar-a-Lago with an unusually delayed request for a court-appointed third party to review the documents seized.
That move, which has been under scrutiny from legal experts - some of whom have mocked the filings' meandering and general shortcomings - may dramatically slow the Justice Department's investigation and may mark Trump's first win in a stormy month for the former president.
Former Attorney General William Barr criticized the special master ruling this week, saying that the judge's decision to grant Trump's request for a special master is "deeply flawed" and urging the Justice Department to appeal it. But he also lowered the temperature on the judge's decision, saying that "I don't think it changes the ball game so much as maybe we'll have a rain delay for a couple of innings."
Even so, as the investigation threatens to grind to a halt over the request for a special master, the country - and even Trump's allies - appear to be in an altogether different place than they were just one month ago.
Where Republican lawmakers and allies were previously clamoring for Trump, they've largely resorted to quiet.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters on Wednesday that he didn't "really have any comments on this whole investigation that's been dominating the news for the last month," after calling last month for a "thorough and immediate explanation" from the Justice Department for their search of Mar-a-Lago.
"You can't have classified material at your house and get away with it," Koger says. "Lots of people have been prosecuted for this, especially during the Trump administration where they increased the penalties for it. And every other Republican who's ever had anything to say about Hillary Clinton's emails or classified material or leaks can't credibly defend Donald Trump and stand for anything else they've ever said on the matter of classified material and national security."
Koger pointed to Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, for example, who has campaigned on law and order, explaining that "now it's hard to be both an advocate for law and order and saying that Donald Trump should be able to flout laws on Florida property and face no consequences."
Nevertheless, Rubio, as the top GOP member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been among a group of Republicans with increasingly tired explanations for Trump's conduct in recent weeks, as new developments have contradicted the former president's defenses when he first announced the search of his Florida estate.
Some have questioned why the issue wasn't raised to the congressional level if the situation was so dire to search the former president's home, albeit ahead of a report in The Washington Post that the documents at Mar-a-Lago included top secret information about the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country.
"They never came to us and said there's a bunch of missing classified information," Politico quoted Rubio as saying. "That's part of the problem here."
Others have questioned whether the documents were ever classified, while some have invoked comparisons to Hillary Clinton, who has re-emerged in the public eye in recent weeks for the use of a personal email account when she served as secretary of state - an issue Trump scorned Clinton for on his path to the White House.
"I can't believe we're still talking about this, but my emails." Clinton wrote in a tweet this week, explaining that she had zero classified emails. "As Trump's problems continue to mount, the right is trying to make this about me again."
For their part, the White House has largely remained quiet on the issue. But last week, it hoisted it, however subtly, to prime time when Biden spoke of MAGA Republicans' commitment to "destroying American democracy" in a speech billed as a presidential address that rang more like a campaign recitation.
"We saw law enforcement brutally attacked on January the 6th," Biden said. "We've seen election officials, poll workers - many of them volunteers of both parties - subjected to intimidation and death threats. And - can you believe it? - FBI agents just doing their job as directed, facing threats to their own lives from their own fellow citizens."
The FBI search has brought speculation about a boost for Democrats in the midterms, whose fortunes were beginning to change at the time Trump announced the incident, as the political power of Roe v. Wade's fall began to emerge at the ballot box. And while the White House refused to weigh in, in the subsequent month - it has begun capitalizing on it.
Trump called Biden's address in a speech delivered days later "the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president," while painting the FBI search of his home as a political ploy by the Biden administration to and an indicator that the U.S. had fallen to the status of a "third world nation."
"It was not just my home that was raided last month, it was the hopes and dreams of every citizen who I've been fighting for since the moment I came down the golden escalator in 2015, wanting to represent the people, wanting to stop the massive corruption of our country, and determined to, finally, in this world, put America first," Trump said.
The former president has appeared to tout the Mar-a-Lago search as a political win, even as he argues he remains a victim, sharing an article via his Save America PAC this week that referenced polling pointing to the search giving him a boost over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a theoretical 2024 presidential primary matchup.
But some have speculated that Mar-a-Lago may make Trump too much of a risk for his party, while his Republican allies walk a difficult line - looking to distance themselves, perhaps anticipating fallout down the road - without flatout rejecting the party's most prominent voice.
As the investigation has unfolded, Trump has on multiple occasions made his own bed, most recently with a social media post in response to a photo of various documents with classified markings included in the Justice Department's filing, seeming to acknowledge that he knew he had classified documents in his possession, despite previous claims.
"They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet, making it look like a big 'find' for them," Trump wrote. "They dropped them, not me."
The picture is notably different from one month ago - when Trump's supporters gathered with signs and banners outside of his Florida residence, declaring that their president had once again become the victim of political persecution. But even as damning details have emerged, Trump's old adage that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing support perhaps rings true.
"If you ask a sample of Americans, do they think that the DOJ did the right thing and the majority are going to say, yes," Binder says, but, he added, "when you slice that up by Republicans, the vast majority of Republicans think this is a witch hunt, think this is overreach, think this is Biden going after [Trump's] political entities."
Indeed, a plurality of Americans, at 44%, think Trump did something illegal when it comes to the FBI search of his Florida estate, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released this week, while 17% think he merely did something unethical and 30% say he did nothing wrong.
Among Republicans, 63% say they believe the same.
"And the Republicans are the ones that matter when it comes down to what happens for a Republican primary in '24," Binder says.
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