After admitting he personally signed off on the FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing the heat.
While speaking to reporters at the Department of Justice, Garland announced that the DOJ filed a motion to unseal the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago.
“The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause,” he told reporters.
“Copies of both the warrant and the FBI property receipt were provided on the day of the search to the former President’s counsel who was on site during the search.”
The FBI’s raid was allegedly over boxes of ‘classified’ information that Trump had supposedly taken to his Florida residence.
President Trump posted on his TRUTH Social account Friday that the documents were “all declassified.”
“Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to “seize” anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request…” Trump posted on TRUTH Social.
WATCH:
Attorney General Merrick Garland on FBI's search of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago home: "I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter." pic.twitter.com/h3Ek1vCaAx
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 11, 2022
However, a New York Post report painted a different story, arguing that the search warrant “focused solely on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored there.”
A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have “planted stuff” because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.
The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored.
Feds arrived at 9 a.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m.
An eyewitness to the raid said all of the boxes were confiscated by federal agents Monday, but it is unknown if anything else was taken as no itemized list of items was provided by the FBI.
Conservative Brief provided further details:
Another issue for Garland is that Trump told the NY Post that several of his attorneys “had been cooperating fully with federal authorities on the return of the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration.”
Assuming that is true, it certainly raises questions about why the FBI needed to conduct an unannounced raid just to retrieve the documents.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul slammed the raid and called for an investigation into Garland.
“Without question, I think the order to allow the raid on Mar-a-Lago on Trump’s house has to be revealed,” Paul said. “It’s going to have to wait until November till there’s a full investigation.”
“And I’ve never been a fan of overusing impeachment, but I think there has to be an investigation. And if it warrants it, there’s going to have to be a look at whether or not the attorney general has misused his office for political purposes. Have they gone after a political opponent? I mean, this is beyond the pale.”
“No one would have ever imagined before that we would be using or one political party would be using the FBI to attack their political opponents,” Paul said. “Now, this is really something that’s going to require an investigation. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the investigation leads to abuse of power that this could even lead to an impeachment of the attorney general.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene took the initiative Friday and filed articles of impeachment against AG Merrick Garland.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland Hit With Articles of Impeachment
Join the conversation!
Please share your thoughts about this article below. We value your opinions, and would love to see you add to the discussion!