Legal experts are blasting the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a bombshell Washington Post exclusive report reveals some FBI agents were “afraid” to raid Mar-a-Lago and some wanted to simply shut down the criminal investigation, delaying for months the retrieval of classified documents that Donald Trump had unlawfully retained and refusal to return.
“Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year,” The Post reports.
“Prosecutors ultimately prevailed in that dispute,” and the “FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Aug. 8, recovering more than 100 classified items, among them a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.”
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Two senior FBI officials wanted to ask Trump’s permission to go to Mar-a-Lago to search the ex-president’s resort and residence, despite having video evidence that appeared to show a trove of presidential documents being moved from a storage room after Trump was directed to return the items, including classified documents, that had been taken from the White House.
Foreign policy and intelligence expert John Sipher, who spent 28 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, said in response to the Post’s report, “Trump bullying worked.”
Noted national security attorney Brad Moss, a frequent political commentator, observed: “This extensive piece once again makes clear a simple fact: the FBI, traumatized from the Trump era assaults on it, treated Trump with kid gloves.”
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Criminal law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said The Post’s story “confirms not only that the FBI is applying different (and more favorable) standards to Trump’s potentially criminal behavior, but also that this deference can be traced in part to Trump’s repeated attacks against the FBI.”
The Washington Post’s Tom Jackman, who runs the paper’s “True Crime” blog, tweeted, “Timid and conservative FBI agents did not want to search Mar-a-Lago for classified docs, led by DC SAC Steven D’Antuono, who said ‘We’re not the presidential records police.'”
USA Today opinion columnist Michael J. Stern observed, “Trump keeps getting away with it because law enforcement keeps letting him.”
Attorney, legal and national security analyst, and former FBI special agent Asha Marie Rangappa leveled perhaps the heaviest criticism: “The FBI has a problem, and it’s coming from inside the house.”
Image: Trump in his Mar-a-Lago office