OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
After admitting to signing off on the FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s residence in Florida, Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing a slew of questions.
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.
Garland said he “personally approved” the matter against the former president.
“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 tied to boxes of classified information that Trump had supposedly taken to his Florida estate.
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, an exclusive report from the New York Post painted a different story, arguing that the search warrant “focused solely on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored there.”
Even so, the FBI reportedly searched Mar-a-Lago for over nine hours.
Some reports even suggested agents searched through former First Lady Melania Trump’s closets and wardrobes, raising even more questions.
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.”
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Biden Justice Department to produce a copy of a search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago, where the FBI conducted a nine-hour-plus search.
Federal Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the DOJ to “file a Response to the Motion to Unseal” the warrant after requests were made by the Times-Union, a newspaper located in Albany, N.Y., as well as the conservative legal group Judicial Watch.
The judge said that the DOJ must respond no later than Aug. 15, reports said.
Reinhart signed off on the FBI’s warrant to search the former president’s palatial home in South Florida in what he said was an “unannounced raid on my home.”
He took a leave of absence from a local U.S. Attorney’s office more than 10 years ago to represent employees of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein after they had gotten immunity during the lengthy probe of the now-late financier for sex trafficking.
Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan said that the warrant was “sealed” when agents showed up to search Trump’s estate.
Another Trump lawyer, Christian Bobb, meanwhile, told streaming network Real America’s Voice: “When I arrived and kind of announced myself as the legal representation for President Trump. I asked to see a copy of the warrant.”
