Who Tipped Off Fox News to FBI Raid of Democratic Leader’s Office?

Fox News was on the scene immediately when the FBI raided Virginia state Senator L. Louise Lucas’s legislative office in Portsmouth, Virginia, on Wednesday, and that may not have been by accident.

Portsmouth is in the southeastern corner of the state, far from Washington, D.C., or Fox’s headquarters in New York, and somehow, the network’s London correspondent, Alex Hogan, was able to capture federal agents entering Lucas’s office.

According to Department of Justice rules, advance notice to the media requires approval at the highest levels.

“In order to promote the aims of law enforcement, including the deterrence of criminal conduct and the enhancement of public confidence, DOJ personnel, with the prior approval of the appropriate United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, may assist the news media in recording or reporting on a law enforcement activity,” the DOJ’s Justice Manual states.

In another section, the manual states that “in cases where a search warrant or arrest warrant is to be executed, no advance information will be provided to the news media without the express approval of the appropriate United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General. This requirement also applies to operations in preparation for the execution of a warrant.”

Both of these rules suggest that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche or one of his direct subordinates gave notice to Fox News before the FBI executed its search warrants Wednesday, and that he wanted the case to get attention for partisan reasons. Lucas is not only a leading Democrat in Virginia, but she was instrumental in pushing for congressional redistricting in the state to favor Democrats.

President Trump was angered after Virginia passed a constitutional amendment to temporarily allow its congressional maps to be redrawn last month, and Blanche has demonstrated his willingness to use the full power of the DOJ to go after Trump’s enemies. Getting the right-wing media to cover an FBI raid on a Democratic politician is the perfect way to make Trump happy.

The Department of Justice has dropped thousands of criminal cases in order to aid and abet Donald Trump’s agenda—and now it seems to be on the verge of assisting some of the president’s allies.

The DOJ seems to be preparing to end a nearly two-year probe into Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles, WTVF reported Tuesday. The agency has so far returned his phone and destroyed the evidence they collected from it, according to the Tennessee Lookout.

The update came by way of a legal motion from Ogles’s team, nixing a long-pending emergency motion that had prevented federal authorities from reviewing evidence on his phone and email.

“In discussions with the Office of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice, the Government has advised defense counsel that it will promptly return or destroy the property obtained pursuant to the respective search warrants at issue,” the motion read. “The emergency motions filed by Congressman Ogles in these matters are therefore moot.”

Ogles’s phone was seized by the FBI shortly after his 2024 primary win, but the investigation was related to discrepancies that appeared in his 2022 election, when he filed a campaign finance report claiming that he loaned his campaign $320,000. The detail raised alarm bells in 2024, when Ogles filed another campaign finance report to acknowledge that he had only loaned the campaign $20,000.

The following year, a U.S House Congressional Ethics panel found “substantial reason to believe” that Ogles had violated federal campaign finance laws by inflating his offices’ fundraising via a personal loan.

The lawmaker’s legal defense claimed that the FBI—as a component of the executive branch—had no right to look at the personal communications of a sitting member of the legislative branch.

“From the day the FBI showed up, I said this investigation should never have happened and that the Biden DOJ had no right to rummage through a sitting congressman’s legislative communications,” Ogles said in a press release. “I’m grateful to the Trump Justice Department for righting this wrong.”

But a wrapped DOJ investigation isn’t the end of Ogles’s legal woes: The House Ethics panel is still investigating him.

President Trump has enlisted the Justice Department to help him appeal the $83.3 million defamation judgment he owes former Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. 

The DOJ plans to ask the Supreme Court for the power to directly represent Trump in his appeal, arguing that he acted as a government employee when he first defamed Carroll in 2019. Instead of Trump v. Carroll, the case would become U.S. v. Carroll.

The DOJ plan was revealed in a filing from Trump’s personal lawyer in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where Trump recently lost an appeal effort to avoid paying Carroll.  Trump’s lawyers also posited that Trump’s presidential immunity and the apparent harm Carroll would cause with the money as reasons for the court to delay the payment. Carroll has said she’d donate the millions upon collection.

This is the federal government spending its time and your money to help the president with a personal lawsuit from the woman he was found liable of sexually abusing in 2023. This massive lack of independence and transparency would be a world-breaking scandal for any other president. For Trump, it’s just Tuesday. 

The $83.3 million judgment remains. 

The FBI raided the Portsmouth, Virginia, office of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, a Democratic leader in the state behind its redistricting victory, on Wednesday, ostensibly over corruption allegations.  

Lucas, an 82-year-old great-grandmother, has been a frequent critic of Republicans and President Trump, and is an ally to Virginia’s Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger. Fox News covered the FBI raid live. 

The bureau reportedly has multiple search warrants, and is also raiding a cannabis dispensary co-owned by Lucas next door. Lucas has frequently advocated for marijuana legalization, and in 2022, her business was found by the Virginia Mercury to be selling delta-9 THC, a substance illegal to sell in Virginia, although many of the products in her store were found to be mislabeled. 

Lucas is combative on social media, posting memes in support of Virginia’s redistricting effort and going toe-to-toe with Republicans like President Trump and Senator Ted Cruz. That could be why she’s being targeted by the FBI, which under director Kash Patel has vindictively pursued Trump’s critics. 

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump dismissed claims Wednesday that the White House ballroom has suffered cost overrun after its price tag skyrocketed from $400 million in private donations to $1 billion sourced from American taxpayers. 

Trump claimed that there was no cost overrun because he’d previously announced that the cost of construction had gone up. 

“The only reason the cost has changed is because, after deep rooted studies, it is approximately twice the size, and a far higher quality, than the original proposal, which would not have been adequate to handle the necessary events, meetings, and even future Inaugurations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

“This was a necessary change, it was done long ago, but the Fake News failed to report it, trying to make it look like there was a cost overrun. Actually, it is coming in ahead of schedule, and under budget!” Trump added. 

Trump originally claimed that the project would only cost $200 million, but that number later ballooned to $300 million, and then $400 million after he decided to tack on extra construction. The ballroom had previously been paid for by private donors, many of whom held multi-figure federal contracts.  

Then, earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley requested $1 billion for “security adjustments and upgrades” related to the ballroom’s construction. Trump is simply pretending the outrage is over the old price tag, and not the exorbitant one Senate Republicans hope to pass, which will come at a cost to U.S. taxpayers. 

Trump’s defense rings especially hollow, considering that the DOJ launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the cost of renovations to the Fed’s office buildings. The suit was a pretext to attack Powell as he tried to maintain the agency’s independence from the White House. 

In March, Judge James Boasberg quashed subpoenas for the criminal case against Powell, finding that the government has produced “essentially zero evidence” to substantiate its claims.