*Update:

The Source Norah O’Donell was Wrong, which is ironic because the update below is from NBC News making this entire piece wrong. We will replace it with the right post:

Passports belonging to Donald Trump have been returned to the former president after last week’s FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, a Justice Department official told NBC News on Monday.

The FBI acknowledged it had had the passports the same day Trump said on his social media platform that FBI agents who conducted the search on Aug. 8 took them.

For all we know, Trump has had his passports on his mind these days. He may need to make a quick trip to, oh, maybe Saudi Arabia if he thinks he can stand the heat, or Moscow if he thinks he can stand the cold. One thing is for sure; he won’t be going with some boxes that he might have been saving. For a while this afternoon, it sounded like he wouldn’t be leaving the country at all.

But it turns out that when Trump set the country immediately chattering, saying that the FBI took his passports (including one that was expired), he was – again, lying.

Someone is lying. DOJ and the FBI say that they didn’t take any passports. Donald Trump says they did. Jeez, who are we supposed to believe? It appears that Trump has, perhaps, lost his passports. Or, he just thought it would sound good.

Norah O’Donnell is not known to lie, and if the FBI or DOJ lied at this point, it would be one of the most massive mistakes in history. We can safely say that they did not take 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.

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

Nuts! Now what? We had all kinds of theories as to why the FBI took them. Although, readers will surely note that some websites, ahem, noted that Trump might well have been lying because we couldn’t think of a legal justification that would allow the FBI to take Trump’s passports. I cannot think of a situation where passports were taken prior to someone being charged and a hearing on bail. In this country, everyone is presumed innocent until the jury says they’ve seen enough. Passports are not taken in a search warrant unless there would be evidence within the passport itself, and it made no sense in the context of espionage and holding top-secret documents.

We should have been even more confident (though we said, “Trump may well just be lying). After all, Trump will say anything at any time. And perhaps his passports have been on his mind, and he’s furious that he cannot find them.

****

[email protected], @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman