FBI raid on Donald Trump’s home ‘weaponises justice system’

Republican leaders have flung their support behind Donald Trump as he weigh whether to run again in 2024.

A member of Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail outside the former president’s home Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Republican leaders have flung their support behind former US president Donald Trump after an FBI raid on his Florida residence sparked a political firestorm.

The FBI move on Monday (Tuesday AEST) marked an escalation of legal probes into the 45th president and comes as he is weighing another White House run. Several former advisers to the 76-year-old urged him to immediately confirm that he would be a presidential candidate in 2024.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the US before,” Mr Trump said of the FBI operation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach.

He denounced the FBI raid as a “weaponisation of the Justice System” by “Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024”.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday that President Joe Biden did not have any notice about the raid and respected the independence of the Justice Department.

Asked about the potential for civil unrest in reaction to Mr Trump’s legal problems, Ms Jean-Pierre said “there’s no place for political violence in this country”.

The FBI agents were conducting a court-authorised search related to the potential mishandling of classified documents that had been sent to Mar-a-Lago after Mr Trump left the White House in January 2021. Mr Trump has also faced intense legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. Since leaving office, Mr Trump has continued to falsely claim he won the 2020 vote.

A day after the raid on Mar-A-Lago, representative Scott Perry – a Trump ally – said FBI agents had confiscated his mobile phone but did not specify why it was taken.

“This morning, while travelling with my family, three FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone,” Mr Perry told Fox News, condemning “these kinds of ­banana republic tactics”.

Leading Republicans rallied around the former president, who was not at Mar-a-Lago when the raid took place.

His former vice-president, Mike Pence, a potential 2024 rival, expressed “deep concern” and said the raid smacked of “partisanship” by the Justice Department.

House of Reprentatives minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who is seeking to become speaker if Republicans win November’s midterm elections, accused the Justice Department of “weaponised politicisation”. Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said “launching an investigation of a former president this close to an election is beyond problematic”.

Representative Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking house Republican, called it a “dark day in American history”.

“If the FBI can raid a US president, imagine what they can do to you,” Ms Stefanik tweeted, to which Democrat representative Ted Lieu replied: “Why can’t the FBI investigate a US president? We’re not Russia, where the law doesn’t apply to the head of state and his cronies.”

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat house Speaker, told NBC that “no person is above the law”.

In his statement, Mr Trump did not give any indication about why the FBI raided his home but said: “They even broke into my safe!”

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who was sacked by Mr Trump, told CNN that agents might have been looking for “something specific” related to the probe into the handling of classified information.

The National Archives said in February that it had recovered 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago and asked the Justice Department to look into Mr Trump’s handling of classified material.

The recovery of the boxes raised questions about Mr Trump’s adherence to presidential records laws enacted after the 1970s Watergate scandal that require Oval Office occupants to preserve records.

Mr Trump’s former communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN the raid could fire up his supporters, a small number of whom rallied outside Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. “If it’s seen as some sort of massive overreach and not something incredibly serious, this is a very good day for Donald Trump,” she said.

Washington has been riveted by hearings in congress about the January 6 storming of the Capitol and Mr Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland has been repeatedly pushed on whether the Justice Department is building a case against Mr Trump over the Capitol riot. Mr Trump is also being investigated for his efforts to alter the 2020 voting results in Georgia, while his business practices are being probed in New York.

AFP