Far-right rages against the FBI on Facebook

The top-performing Facebook posts about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago

On Monday night, news broke that the FBI executed a legal search warrant on former President Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Reactions from Republican elected officials were swift, with GOP leaders from Ronna McDaniel to Kevin McCarthy criticizing the action as political and demanding an explanation. FWIW, Trump could publicize the warrant at any time to explain the situation, and is choosing not to.

On Facebook, which is often a cesspool of conservative outrage and misinformation, far-right personalities were right out of the gate with scorching takes, and as a result, their misinformation campaign gained lots of ground online. While some extremist users took to social media - even LinkedIn! - to agitate for political violence, other GOP operatives have gone all-in in delegitimizing the FBI and exonerating Trump for their audiences. We searched Crowdtangle for all public Facebook posts mentioning “FBI” over the past 72 hours, and here are the posts we found with the most reactions, shares, and comments: