(TargetDailyNews.com) – Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back on claims made by former President Donald Trump that the FBI was authorized to use deadly force against Trump and members of the Secret Service during the 2022 raid of Mar-A-Lago. Without specifically denouncing the claim made by Trump that the FBI could have started a firefight with the Secret Service or that they were authorized to do so in certain circumstances, Garland claimed that the practices used were standard and universal.
Garland suggested the claim was “false” and characterized it as “extremely dangerous” during a press briefing. Trump posted that “Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ” approved the use of deadly force during the raid of the property to secure disputed documents. Trump maintains the records were rightfully his at the time they were taken and has suggested that Obama acolytes at the National Archives and Records Administration prompted the legal fiasco by demanding the documents be returned.
Trump wasn’t at the resort when the FBI arrived – he was in New Jersey at the time – but newly unsealed records have suggested that the FBI was authorized to use deadly force and that the agency even went door to door inside the resort unlocking guests’ rooms.
Garland was likely to defend the decision as he was most responsible for handling the raid as head of the Department of Justice. His signature is on every document authorizing the search. The crux of his defense seems to be the claim that the raid was standard practice, ignoring the fact that the man was a former president and Biden’s chief political rival at the time.
Trump has been accused of illegally withholding the documents, but the Presidential Records Act has given past presidents a lot of latitude in how they retain records. Trump is the first former president to be prosecuted for allegations relating to mishandling classified documents.
President Joe Biden similarly withheld documents as vice president and senator. Numerous tranches of documents were located shortly after the raid on Trump, including stashes that were kept at home in his garage as well as at his former offices. Biden was not prosecuted for any criminal mishandling, even though he used the documents to produce a memoir, allowing his ghostwriter access. Biden was paid $8 million as an advance for the rights to publish both his and his wife’s memoirs in 2017.
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