How A Local Florida Journalist Scooped Every Reporter In The Country On The FBI Raid At Mar-A-Lago

"This was 100% the biggest scoop that I probably will ever get."

Peter Schorsch was under no illusions that his scoop about the FBI raiding Donald Trump's Florida home on Monday evening was nothing short of earth-shattering.

"There's smaller, personal accomplishments that you feel good about," he told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday. "But let's not be coy. This was 100% the biggest scoop that I probably will ever get."

It had been nearly 24 hours since Schorsch, who runs Florida Politics, tweeted that the feds were executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the former president's Palm Beach residence, citing two anonymous sources.

"Not sure what the search warrant was about," he wrote. "TBH, Im not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down, but its real."

Scoop — The Federal Bureau of Investigation @FBI today executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, two sources confirm to @Fla_Pol. "They just left," one source said. Not sure what the search warrant was about. TBH, Im not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down, but its real.

Twitter: @PeterSchorschFL

It was extraordinary news about the former president, who has been the subject of multiple criminal investigations.

That it came from a journalist running a hyperlocal politics blog was one thing; the seemingly self-deprecating kicker in his tweet was another. Political journalists aren't typically known for public humility, especially when reporting a career-defining scoop.

But Schorsch said determining what the warrant was about was beyond what he was capable of in the frantic moments between confirming the news and tweeting it.

"This was too important of a situation to not put up the bat signal for more help [from other reporters]," he said.

"You know, my job is to make payroll. I talk with a lot of people, I do podcasts, I lay out, you know, snarky tweets and things like that. I know my place in the world," he said. "There's just people that are better at what this requires."

A former political consultant who covers politics in Florida — which he described as "drinking from a fire hose upside down" — Schorsch first got word of the raid from a longtime friend, who texted him about a "yuge" scoop. Schorsch thought it would be about a local candidate the former president would endorse or an event he'd be attending.

He and his friend spent the first few minutes of the conversation catching up.

"Then at the end, they were kind of like, 'Yada yada yada, the FBI is raiding Mar-a-Lago,' and I was kind of like, 'What did you just say?'" he said. "So my mind just races at that point, and I had to be polite to my friend who I was talking to and get them off the phone."

Schorsch's tweet sparked a frenzy among reporters across the country trying to confirm the news. Minutes later, Trump issued a statement railing against the raid and confirming Schorsch's scoop.

It's still unclear what the warrant was for, but Politico, the New York Times, and the Associated Press reported that it was related to boxes of classified documents that Trump improperly removed from the White House when he left.

Schorsch said he's grateful that local journalism and his website have had so much support because of his scoop, especially with the Florida primaries coming up. It still felt surreal to him.

But, he said, he hoped he didn't "scare" off new followers.

"I tweet about very micro Florida stuff. So I'm like, you know what, let's not ruin this nice thing right now with this increased audience by tweeting about the next Avengers movie or about House District 42 in Florida," he said. "So I'm gonna give it a moment before I return to our regularly scheduled program."

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