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Conservative commentator Mark Levin slammed the FBI’s raid of President Donald Trump’s home following the release of the agency’s heavily redacted affidavit to obtain the search warrant.
“This is an assault, an assault on Trump and his supporters, an assault on the Republican Party, an assault on our country,” the host charged Sunday on “Life, Liberty & Levin.”
Released Friday, the unredacted portion of the affidavit provided little information as to why the FBI felt the need to raid the president’s home, other than the concern that there might be classified documents “intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”
However, given the disparity between the FBI’s treatment of Trump and known Espionage Act violators Hillary Clinton and James Comey, Levin decried the agency’s claims of apprehension as a “disgusting ruse.”
“The former president has the legal right to access any and all of the documents created during his presidency, classified or otherwise, period,” he said. “The second before he left office, by his very actions alone in taking documents, he could be said to have declassified them. … I’m certain about it.”
Noting that there are no penalties specified under the Presidential Records Act, Levin added that the law was written with the expectation that former presidents would negotiate with the National Archives to determine the classification of records and which ones were to remain private.
“The former President was out of office only 12 months when this issue publicly arose in January to February about boxes that became known,” he said. “That’s a very short period of time. Sometimes negotiations have gone on for years. Certainly, no reason to pull a search warrant trigger.”
He continued: “And if there was some kind of urgency, Attorney General Garland has a funny way of showing it. He was slow to authorize the seeking of a search warrant. He took two or three weeks to noodle over. ‘What should I do? I’m going after parents. I’m going after people who oppose abortion. I’m going after state legislatures. I refuse to enforce the law on the border. I’ve got so much to think about.’ And once secured, the warrant wasn’t executed for three days or so.”
Holding that the entire affair seemed “suspicious,” Levin contended, “At least in part, this indicates the use of a pretext to search for information related to other matters like January 6.”
Last week, President Trump’s legal team filed a motion requesting that a special master be appointed to review the documents seized by the FBI from his home for any that might relate to attorney-client privilege. Subsequently, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon was assigned to oversee the request.
On Monday, the Justice Department responded to Trump’s motion by noting that its Privilege Review Team had already completed a review of “a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information” and was following procedures to address potential disputes.
Per a Saturday court filing, a hearing on the motion to appoint a special master has been set for 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 1, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
