Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blasted the FBI’s raid Monday night on former President Donald Trump‘s home at Mar-a-Lago, saying the Biden administration has turned the nation into a “Banana Republic.”
The investigation is centered around classified material that Trump brought with him to Mar-a-Lago from the White House. But the shocking specter of federal agents swarming a former president’s private home left many conservatives, including DeSantis, stunned.
“The raid of [Mar-a-Lago] is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves,” DeSantis wrote on Twitter. “Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.”
The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 9, 2022
The New York Times reported that Trump delayed returning more than a dozen boxes of material to the National Archives which included documents that were “marked as classified national security information.”
Federal prosecutors opened a grand jury investigation back in May into Trump over whether classified material that ended up at his home in Mar-a-Lago was mishandled.
The main purpose of these types of investigations is usually for federal authorities to determine if any classified material was compromised so that intelligence officials can take steps to protect sensitive sources and methods. Prosecutors are seeking to learn every aspect of how the documents were handled from the time the documents left the White House until they were returned to the National Archives.
For prosecutors to be able to prove that a crime was committed, they would need evidence showing that the parties involved in removing the documents from the White House knew that the documents were classified and knew that removing them would violate the law.
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