Pressure builds on Trump and Biden to release Mar-a-Lago search warrant
Mar-a-Lago #Mar-a-Lago
The warrant that authorized the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago on Monday remains shrouded in secrecy despite bipartisan calls to both former President Donald Trump and the Biden administration for its release.
The search warrant would provide information related to the documents that the FBI was looking for at the Florida resort, as well as details as to why the search would have likely uncovered evidence that Trump had committed a crime. The raid was reportedly related to boxes of materials Trump brought with him to Mar-a-Lago after he left the Oval Office in January 2021.
Numerous Democratic politicians and commentators challenged Trump on Tuesday to release the warrant and suggested he hasn’t done so yet because it would detail the laws he allegedly violated. Republicans, meanwhile, pressured the Biden administration to release the warrant in order to prove the unprecedented raid on the former president’s home was justified and to maintain the public’s faith in the justice system.
DOJ AND FBI SILENT FOLLOWING RAID OF TRUMP’S MAR-A-LAGO HOME
Trump said Monday that the “unannounced raid” on his home was “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
Trump added that FBI officers had “broke into [his] safe,” but his son Eric Trump said Monday that his father “didn’t even have anything in the safe.”
Multiple liberal politicians and commentators noted Tuesday that Trump and his lawyers have a copy of the warrant and could release it to the public and prove that he’s the victim of prosecutorial abuse.
“Search of Trump abusive? Law enforcement leaves a copy of the search warrant, which itemizes what they are looking for and what laws were violated,” said Neal Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general during the Obama administration. “If Trump/RNC think this search signed off on by a fed judge is abusive & they have nothing to hide,release the warrant to the public.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) called on Trump to show the search warrant or “shut it.”
“Donald Trump has a copy of the search warrant,” Swalwell tweeted. “He’d show us the warrant if he were so wronged. Show it or shut it.”
Trump’s representatives did not return requests for comment.
Other politicians on both sides of the aisle called on the Biden administration to release the warrant.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a prominent critic of Trump, urged the Department of Justice to “immediately explain the reason for the raid.”
Cuomo added that the raid “must be more than a search for inconsequential archives or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation & legitimacy of January 6 investigations.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) piggybacked off Cuomo’s tweet and urged Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray to release the warrant to the public immediately.
“The American people deserve to see it. NOW,” Cruz tweeted.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) also called on the Biden administration to “at the minimum” release the documents that authorized the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.
“If the federal government cannot ultimately provide overwhelming evidence that action was absolutely necessary, then it will only undermine faith in democracy and the rule of law, and further divide Americans,” Hogan said in a statement.
Biden and White House aides said they had no prior knowledge of the raid and first learned about it through news reports. The FBI and the DOJ have remained tight-lipped about the purpose and justification of the Mar-a-Lago raid.
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Wyn Hornbuckle, the DOJ’s deputy director of public affairs, previously told the Washington Examiner that “we’ll decline to comment” on the raid.