By now, we’ve had a few questions about the credibility of the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, where supposedly classified documents were found. But now, thanks to a report by a senior FBI official, we have even more reason to look at the raid as a personal and political attack.
According to long-time FBI agent Steven D’Antuono, several violations in the procedure were made before and during the raid, which would and should taint the whole event. And those have caused D’Antuono to question the FBI’s role in the invasion.
D’Antuono made these violations known in recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. Chairman Jim Jordan took down these concerns and included them in a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
As Jordan noted, D’Antuono saw “several abnormalities” leading up to the raid and during the event itself.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) June 9, 2023
The first is that the raid was assigned to the Washington Field Office rather than the Miami one much closer to Mar-a-Lago.
Secondly, D’Antuono noted that the Bureau never received any sort of consent to search Trump’s home before obtaining the search warrant. Neither did the FBI wait for Trump’s attorney to be present before entering the house unannounced.
And then there is the fact that a US attorney wasn’t assigned to oversee the raid, meaning the DOJ was essentially left out of the entire thing.
All of these procedural violations make the event seem more and more like a political hit rather than an attempt to actually reclaim classified documents. This is especially true when weighed against the fact that similar raids or even investigations have not been conducted against Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or Mike Pence, all of whom have been found with classified documents in their possession.
As such, Jordan is demanding answers from both the FBI and Biden’s DOJ. He wrote, “Please provide this information as soon as possible but not later than 5:00 p.m. on June 16, 2023.”
