Joe Biden claims he never interfered with Department of Justice (DOJ) operations, but we all assume that is just a lie.
Every president says that the agency retains its independence, but the DOJ always has an agenda that it carries out on behalf of the sitting president.
To that point, reports are now breaking that when the 2022 raid of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was ordered, the FBI had serious concerns about whether legal justification existed for the action.
On Aug. 8, 2022, the Mar-a-Lago resort, home to Trump, was raided by federal authorities.
The raid was reportedly scheduled to take place at a time when Trump would not be at the residence to avoid any possible conflict with Secret Service agents assigned to the then-former president's protective detail.
The search reportedly took most of a full day, and it included a large group of FBI agents, as well as other authorities.
We later learned that the raid was associated with an investigation into classified documents that were allegedly taken unlawfully by Trump after he left the White House at the end of his first term.
The moment that Trump’s home was raided, speculation ran wild on the right that the order for the operation came down from Biden as a way to take Trump out at all costs.
Biden, of course, denied this was the case, with the White House claiming that it was informed of the raid in advance, a claim many find implausible. If you are going to raid the home of a former president, one would think the current president would be looped in.
At the time, then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated, “The Justice Department conducts investigations independently, and we leave any law enforcement matters to them. We are not involved.”
When she was asked whether the White House was given advance notice, she insisted, “No, that did not happen.”
FBI emails that were recently declassified show there was more than just a little doubt among agents before the raid about whether it was legally justifiable. For instance, in one email, an agent stated that “very little has been developed related to who might be culpable for mishandling the documents.”
The agent also stated that the search warrant affidavit that had been drafted was based on a “single source” of information that had “not been corroborated” and “may be dated.” Just like in journalism, using single-source information is generally considered taboo, especially for an operation as high-profile as this.
The FBI, however, was being pressured by the DOJ, with one email stating that Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Toscas told them that he “frankly doesn’t give a damn about the optics.”
Some documents suggest that Biden’s White House had made a “special access request” that helped the DOJ retrieve certain documentation at the time. Eventually, the truth always comes out, and it does appear to once again prove that the previous administration was weaponizing the DOJ to take out Trump.
