Marshall: ‘Concerned who the FBI really is’ after Trump raid
(AP) A Republican senator from Kansas says his phone “blew up” with questions from constituents shortly after news broke about an FBI search at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence.
Trump, disclosing the search in a lengthy statement, asserted that agents had opened up a safe at his home and described their work as an “unannounced raid” that he likened to “prosecutorial misconduct.”
The search intensifies the monthslong probe into how classified documents ended up in boxes of White House records located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. It occurs amid a separate grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and adds to the potential legal peril for Trump as he lays the groundwork for another run.
Sen. Roger Marshall, whose dad was a police officer, said he grew up with a great deal of respect for the FBI, but that view is changing.
“It feels like last night, Lady Justice took her blindfold off. When all this went down in Mar-a-Lago, my phone blew up. Friends and family members asked me, what in the world is going on? Why is the law not being applied equally? You know, friends texted me things like, is the FBI turned into the Gestapo,” Marshall told the Associated Press.
“I grew up with a great deal of respect for the FBI. My dad was a police officer. We watched a show every every Sunday night, a show called FBI that we — the FBI were the good guys. And right now, we’re all concerned who the FBI really is. And then we see the IRS adding 87,000 new agents as well. They’re going to be armed. They already have their guns and ammunition. Folks back home are real concerned about what the federal government has become.”
Marshall says this reminds him of ‘Russiagate’ and how the ‘FISA court process was abused.’
“So Americans are thinking the same thing. What was the process like? Americans want to see some transparency. And that’s why FBI Director Wray and Attorney General Garland need to get in front of America today and explain to them and answer the tough questions the national media needs to ask them and the president these tough questions. We deserve answers. We deserve the transparency. We need to understand that the process that was taken, that they followed the law to the letter.”
Familiar battle lines, forged during a a four-year presidency shadowed by FBI and congressional investigations, quickly took shape again Monday night. Trump and his allies sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from winning another term in 2024 — even though the Biden White House said it had no prior knowledge of it, and the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Trump five years ago and served as a high-ranking official in a Republican-led Justice Department.
Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas told the Kansas City Star much is still unknown about the raid but noted, “No one is above the law.”