Partisan politics and division have reared their ugly head in the early fallout in the FBI raid on former President Trump’s home. It appears Trump is in clear violation of the Presidential Records Act by simply taking documents with him when he left the Oval Office. More details have dropped regarding the search warrant and was taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Louisiana Congressman and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told me he’s upset with the double standard applied to the former president.
What is your appreciation of where we are with what's going on with the execution of a search warrant at former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate?
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland did acknowledge he signed off on a warrant to search Trump’s home in advance. There’s still no word if President Biden was aware in advance as well, but they still haven't talked about why they took this unprecedented step. There are a lot of concerns I have about this raid and there's a lot of gray area, because presidents have the ability to declassify things on their own.
Is it really a gray area? Trump doesn't get to just wave a magic wand and say what papers are classified or not. There's a process, right?
Over the years, presidents have declassified things in many ways. If a president gives a speech and says something that was previously classified, that can be their way of declassifying it. They can tell one of their top staffers, I'm declassifying this, so it's not like you have to go through some formal process. It's a privilege given to every president that they have the ability to declassify information. Again, if there was information that they wanted, there's a subpoena process.
Why are we not focused on what a former president has the authority to do? Trump did not have the authority to take any of those records other than his own personal records.
Every president takes records. Many have taken more than what president Trump took and no one has ever questioned it.
Why did Trump give documents back if was entitled to them and had every right to have them?
The question should be, is the law being applied equally? You can't talk about this without talking about how the FBI has not been having the same approach at the upper echelon officials, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Sandy Berger. You can go down the list of so many examples of people, who have openly mishandled classified information who faced absolutely no consequence. If justice is truly going to be blind, then let's treat everybody with the same presumption of innocence and with the same approach.
