(LifeSiteNews) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation raid this week on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home is likely meant to prevent Trump from running for president in 2024, a former lawyer for the Trump administration claimed Wednesday.
On Monday, the FBI conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, ostensibly over Trump’s possession of classified documents from his presidency.
Conservatives and Republicans suspect that reason is a pretext to persecute the ex-president for political reasons, citing the lighter treatment various Democrat officials (such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, and former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger) received for mishandling classified materials, despite lacking Trump’s former authority as President of the United States to declassify material.
The Epoch Times reports that former Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark said it “defies rational explanation to think that this is really something that is not explainable by pure politics,” in light of the aforementioned Democrat cases “that had been totally swept under the rug.”
One particular point of dispute has been whether Trump could shed light on the case by releasing a copy of the search warrant agents presented to him. His opponents say he likely has a copy and doesn’t want to release it because it would show the search to be well-founded; his defenders assert he doesn’t have a copy, or if he does he cannot release it without exposing classified information it references.
Clark, whose own home was searched this summer by the FBI as part of the January 6 investigation, did not have firsthand knowledge of the question in Trump’s case but suggested that the affidavit used to obtain the warrant could be “something that the President’s lawyers need to do wrangling in order to get access to. But they should certainly try. I think that a warrant needs to have that support, and not just be part of a secret process.”
“I still don’t have a copy of the affidavit that was used to obtain the warrant for the search of my house,” noted Clark.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has officially crossed a line by weaponizing the FBI to target America’s most influential conservative leader — former president Donald Trump, a private citizen — without due process and with obvious political bias.
SIGN this petition to FBI Director Christopher Wray - condemn this blatant political policing againt former President Trump.
This single act has sent an unmistakable signal that anyone who holds a dissenting political belief from the leftist regime can have his or her life ruined by the Deep State — forcing them to defend themselves from a faceless FBI attack-arm of the federal government.
The FBI just proved that Donald Trump was right. He’s always been right.
— Benny Johnson 🍊 (@bennyjohnson) August 9, 2022
No one will ever forget this.
We cannot stand for the complete corruption and weaponization of America's law enforcement, and especially not the FBI. We must stand united, bold, and patriotic — in the name of liberty, the rule of law, and American Greatness.
SEND A BOLD MESSAGE TODAY: WE ABSOLUTELY CONDEMN THE DESPICABLE FBI RAID ON A PRIVATE AMERICAN CITIZEN — AND WE WILL NOT STOP FIGHTING FOR AMERICA FIRST!
This kind of weaponization of federal agencies against private citizens who hold a dissenting worldview is seen only in third-world countries.
This is exactly why Americans must use their voices and shout even more loudly that this country is worth saving from the ideologues on the radical left who care only about power and control.
We won’t know how fully insane the FBI raid on Trump is until we see the warrant and warrant application. But after Russiagate – years of investigation predicated largely on Clinton campaign misinformation -- if the basis for this isn’t bedrock-solid, there should be hell to pay.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 9, 2022
Destroying 30K classified emails with a hammer and bleach doesn’t get your home searched. Remember that.
— Erielle Davidson (@politicalelle) August 9, 2022
American patriots will continue standing in the way of the left's attempt at hostile takeover, and will always defend America from her enemies — both foreign and domestic.
SIGN NOW: Our Founding Fathers added their names to the Declaration of Independence, and now more than ever is it important to add your name to the growing list of patriots who uphold our inalienable rights and the promise of self-government.
The @FBI raid on President Trump was approved by Director Wray, who also claimed that the illegal FISA warrants used to spy on Trump were constitutional.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 9, 2022
Today’s raid is outrageous and unjust, but predictable.
Stand up against the targeting of private American citizens from FBI raids - we refuse to back down!
Thank you.
P.S. — Nobody is safe from politically motivated attacks under the current DOJ. And with 87,000 new IRS agents joining the executive branch, the unaccountable federal government is only growing. Now is the time to push back before it’s too late! SIGN NOW AND STAND STRONG TOGETHER!
After todays raid on Mar A Lago what do you think the left plans to use those 87,000 new IRS agents for?
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 9, 2022
Ultimately, Clark said, he believes the raid is part of attempts to prevent Trump from attempting to return to the White House.
“Marc Elias [former Clinton attorney] is saying that the criminal statute could result in President Trump being barred from future office,” Clark says. “And I think it’s clearly part of his plan. He had been using an earlier plan of trying to use the Fourteenth Amendment provisions to bar folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn from holding federal office again. So this seems to be a general Democrat plan.”
Yes, I recognize the legal challenge that application of this law to a president would garner (since qualifications are set in Constitution). But the idea that a candidate would have to litigate this is during a campaign is in my view a "blockbuster in American politics."
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 9, 2022
Others suspect the opposite – that the raid is meant to either keep public attention on Trump to distract from President Joe Biden’s handling of the issues, or to provoke sympathy for Trump that goads Republicans into nominating him again, on the theory that he would be easier to defeat following his loss to Biden.
“I’m worried that the Democrats, liberals may be two steps ahead of us on this,” former U.S. Secretary of Education and conservative author William Bennett said Wednesday. “They want to focus on Donald Trump. They certainly succeeded in doing that, no matter what else is there at Mar-a-Lago or what they might have even brought to Mar-a-Lago. The focus is on Donald Trump. Since Monday, we’ve not heard a lot about inflation – a little bit – but we’ve heard mostly about Donald Trump. I think they’d like him to declare before the ’22 midterms, because then they can make him the focus.”
In the meantime, please consider signing LifeSite’s petition today to condemn the raid and send a clear message that politically-motivated law enforcement decisions cannot stand.