MSNBC's Joy Reid: Could Trump documents be related to killed CIA agents?
MSNBC host Joy Reid speculated on air that documents seized by the FBI during its raid on Trump's Florida home might have related to CIA informants' deaths in 2021.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid wondered out loud on Monday whether documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home were related to a rash of American spy deaths in 2021.
"The ReidOut" featured a panel discussing the news that a federal judge ordered an independent special master be appointed to review the documents seized by the FBI during its raid in August. While Reid and the panel condemned this judge for making Trump "untouchable," she also suggested that the classified documents surrounding Trump could have connections to CIA assets being murdered.
"While all of this is happening, we know that in 2021 that there was a rash of deaths of American spies. They were being caught. They were being killed. This is a very real and exigent circumstance. The CIA has admitted to that. Now, we are not saying that we know there is some connection between the purloined documents and those events. But they did happen at a time when Trump did have custody of some really sensitive information that he should not have had," Reid said.
The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is seen at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, April 13, 2016. ( (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
A memo sent to the New York Times in 2021 reported that the CIA allegedly warned stations a "troubling numbers of informants" were being captured or killed. The CIA declined to comment at the time, though the memo cited "poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies" and "moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks" as reasons.
Reid also claimed that the U.S. government’s seizure of Russian oligarch Victor Vekselberg’s yachts in April could be connected to the raid based on his past meetings with Trump’s team.
The FBI has been criticized for raiding former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home (Fox News)
"When you think about that, when you think about Victor Vekselberg, who is being investigated for something else for fraud, but he’s a Russian oligarch in Trump crony world. His house recently got raided. His yacht got seized. You think investigators were looking for something different. But Trump knows the kind of people who one might want to investigate, who might want to do bad things to the United States and might not be on our side. And I wonder how frustrated do you think law enforcement must be knowing that they can’t look at any of that," Reid said.
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Although Vekselberg’s connections with the Trump team have been investigated thoroughly since 2018, the Russian oligarch also had ties to former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State.
MSNBC analyst Glenn Kirschner responded to Reid’s comments by insisting that the Justice Department has everything they need to arrest and interrogate Trump.
A federal judge ruled on Monday that an independent special master should be appointed to review documents the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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"They could be arresting Donald Trump because they have probable cause plus, plus, plus. Arrest him, Mirandize him, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s recent opinion that Miranda’s still a thing. Then interrogate him if he waives his Miranda rights, and extract from him information that could protect our national security as best we can tell. The Department of Justice is doing none of that," Kirschner said.
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