Trump Comments Further on Raid

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 10, 2022) – Early Wednesday morning, 45th President Donald J. Trump confirmed on his TruthSocial platform that no civilians, including his attorneys, were permitted to “be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago” on Monday morning by the FBI under the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The law-enforcement intrusion was at first believed to have been connected to the search by the January 6 Committee for evidence that Trump incited the “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 arising from a rally and protest of the reported results of the November 3, 2020 presidential election showing Joe Biden the victor.

Later Monday evening, however, the media indicated the FBI was seeking boxes of documents allegedly taken from the White House which could have been in violation of the Presidential Records Act about which Trump’s attorneys had reportedly been in discussions with the Justice Department as recently as June.

Trump was at Trump Tower in New York City as the raid unfolded, which Fox News reported Wednesday morning lasted nine hours.

The Justice Department has not commented on the reasons for the raid, and neither the Trump camp nor the DOJ has unsealed the warrant. The federal magistrate who approved it, Judge Bruce Reinhart, is a two-time Obama donor and former defense lawyer for several former employees of the late Jeffrey Epstein, multiple sources reported, citing a 2018 article from The Miami Herald.

The Herald did not allow The Post & Email access to its article even after we disabled our ad-blocker for the site.

Reinhart also donated a lesser amount to the presidential campaign of former Florida Jeb Bush (R).

“Reinhart was later named in a civil lawsuit by two of Epstein’s victims that accused him of violating Justice Department policies by switching sides in the middle of the Epstein investigation, suggesting he had spilled inside information about the probe to build favor with the notorious defendant, the Herald reported in 2018,” The New York Post wrote on Tuesday.

The Washington Free Beacon additionally uncovered that “As a criminal defense attorney, Reinhart represented Democratic congressman Tim Mahoney, a Florida lawmaker who ran on a platform of ‘faith, family, and personal responsibility’ while carrying on a series of extramarital affairs. Mahoney subsequently came under FBI investigation for hiring one of his mistresses to work in his congressional office before putting her on his campaign payroll.”

Reinhart was not nominated by a president to serve on the federal judge, The Free Beacon reported, but rather, “appointed by a majority vote of U.S. District Court judges in Southern Florida. Candidates for the position must be ‘a member of good standing of a state or territory’s highest court bar’ and are ‘vetted by a merit selection panel that consists of lawyers and non-lawyers from the community.'”

In March, Trump filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against more than two dozen plaintiffs, among them “Hillary R. Clinton”; the law firm Perkins Coie; current national security adviser and former aide to Clinton Jake Sullivan; “Steele Dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, whose work product was largely discredited after years of investigation showed no evidence of the 2016 Trump campaign having “colluded” with Russia; former FBI employees Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe and Kevin Clinesmith; former FBI Director James Comey; the United States of America and former Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Approximately three months after its filing, Reinhart recused himself from the case.

Also on Tuesday former OAN journalist and current Save America PAC attorney Christina Bobb said she was present at Mar-a-Lago as the raid took place and that she believes the FBI is engaged in “just making stuff up” “in order to actually try to indict the former president.”

In an earlier comment on TruthSocial, Trump said the FBI “broke into” a safe on the premises and that “this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024…”

“I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before,” Trump’s post continued. “The establishment hated it. Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all poles, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.”

On Wednesday morning, the results of four states’ primary elections were announced, with Trump-endorsed candidates defeating their challengers in Wisconsin and Connecticut. In the former, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, an endorsee of Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence; in Connecticut, Cuban-born Leora Levy overwhelmingly defeated first-generation American and immigration attorney Peter Lunaj and former Connecticut House Minority Leader Themis Klarides in the race for U.S. Senate. Levy will run in November against incumbent Richard Blumenthal (D), who Trump described Wednesday as “very beatable.”

The New England states currently have no Republican members in Congress.

In Washington State, Trump-endorsed Republican challenger and former Army Green Beret Joe Kent unseated Jaime Herrera-Beutler, who voted in favor of Trump’s second impeachment following the events of January 6, 2021.

Late Tuesday evening, Sirius XM host Megyn Kelly opined on her show that “there is no way that’s what they were searching for…This is about January 6, and the never-ending desire to get Donald Trump on something…”

Ironically, Kelly was herself accused of bias against Trump as she hosted a debate on Fox News among the Republican primary candidates in August 2015. “You can’t out-trump Donald Trump. You will lose!” Trump responded to Kelly at the time.

A search warrant has never been served on a sitting or former president of the United States in the nation’s 246-year history.