A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss stunning developments in Kansas and the Senate, along with the FBI’s visit to Mar-a-Lago.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Two significant takeaways from Garland’s presser. Garland personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant and carry out the search. The DOJ is asking the court to unseal portions of the search warrant and the inventory of what was seized in the search.

We’re awaiting a statement from AG Merrick Garland currently scheduled for 2:30 p.m. eastern. Presumably this is about the incident in Cincinnati though officially there’s no word on the subject. But conceivably there will be some reference to the search at Mar-a-Lago if today’s incident appears tied to the Monday search.

Again, this is just speculation: there’s no word about what it’s about.

Late Update: CNN reports that this will be about the Mar-a-Lago search.

At 9 a.m. this morning an armed man entered the FBI field office in Cincinnati and tried to shoot his way past security. An exchange of gunfire of some sort ensued. The man retreated and then drove off. This led to a chase and finally a standoff with the armed man at which there were more exchanges of gunfire — apparently in a cornfield. That standoff apparently continues, after more exchanges of gunfire. Thus far there are no reports of injuries. There are unconfirmed repots that assailant was wearing body armor and had a nail gun in addition to an AR-15 style rifle.

From the Twitter account of the Cincinnati FBI field office …

At approximately 9 AM this morning an armed subject attempted to breach the Visitor Screening Facility at #FBI Cincinnati. After an alarm and a response by FBI special agents, the subject fled north onto Interstate 71.

Appears to be a fairly large lockdown in the surrounding area.

More details here from TPM team.

This post will be updated with new information.

A new report says that yesterday and today a lot of Jan. 6th-involved Republicans in the Pennsylvania state legislature got visits or subpoenas from the FBI. The issue seems to be the fake electors scheme and people who either worked with or had knowledge of the actions of federal Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA).

A few hours after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort Monday night, the former president shared what appeared to be a campaign-style video on his official Truth Social page. You know, the place where he has to post all his stream-of-conscious screeds now that he’s been booted from normal social media for inciting violence and trying to do a coup.

I’m not saying I expect to see a new Democratic senator from North Carolina. But the Democrats’ Senate map is expanding. There have been four polls of the North Carolina Senate race since mid-June (Budd v. Beasley), three of them GOP-funded. Their margins for Democrat Cheri Beasley have been, in order, Beasley -5, Beasley -3, Beasley +2, Beasley +4. That’s a pretty nice trend for Beasley.

North Carolina has been a heartbreaker for Democrats in recent cycles. I’m not predicting a Democratic pick up. But this is clearly a competitive race. At a minimum Republicans are going to have to fight to hold that seat.

At the end of a lengthy statement attacking New York AG Tish James, Trump admits he took the 5th.

* Judge tells Rudy Giuliani no dice (sub. req.). He must appear before a Fulton County grand jury next week (Aug. 17th) unless he can provide a better explanation from a doctor about why it is medically impossible for him to do so.

* The Kremlin is paying millions to a notorious American conspiracy theorist, Ben Swann, to create a series of news style TV shows aimed at blackening America’s image around the world. Here’s the FARA filing.

So here we are, an FBI raid on the ex-President’s Florida compound. (Some of you say we are following GOP messaging calling it a “raid” rather than executing a search warrant. They’re both accurate but we’ve always called these “raids” in years of covering these events. So no reason to change now.) Republicans are predictably lining up in defense of the President as the victim of political persecution, threatening payback after January 2023 and January 2025.

But not all of you are punch drunk with schadenfreude. I’ve received a few emails from TPM Readers who fear this is an unfolding catastrophe for Democrats or the country or any opponents of Trumpism. TPM Reader EA finds it hard to believe that Garland, Wray and a federal judge would authorize such a dramatic move over an essentially bureaucratic document retention issue. But he’s been disappointed in DOJ and FBI in recent years and worries. TPM Reader JB is much more concerned, calling it a “PR disaster … because our side has nothing to say … I worry this is Mueller all over again. A cautious technocrat in a China shop.” Others speculate more generally about a bureaucratic drift toward a warrant to seize documents Trump resisted turning over. One step leads to another and suddenly this is where you are but no one has stepped back and figured in the broadly political and constitutional context.