Former FBI Director Annihilates Trump’s Case Against the DOJ Over Docs Search: ‘Laughable’
Former President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he was suing the Department of Justice for $100 million, claiming that he was the target of “political persecution” when the FBI raided his Mar-A-Lago estate in 2022 to retrieve classified documents.
On CNN, anchor Brianna Keilar questioned former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to get his opinion on the lawsuit, and McCabe didn’t think it held a lot of water. He called it “laughable” and “ridiculous,” and he explained why:
McCabe: There is very, very little legal merit or chance that this will succeed. This is a political move, not really so much of a legal move. There’s many checks and balances built into our justice system, as you know. One of them is the government doesn’t ever take an action like this on their own. They go to court, and they prove to a judge that there’s probable cause to believe that there’s evidence in a particular location. That’s what happened here with Mar-A-Lago. A federal judge made that determination, and the FBI simply executed, conducted their authorized law enforcement activity pursuant to that warrant.
Keilar: You said a federal judge made that determination. And part of the basis for that was that the Justice Department — the feds had tried on multiple occasions to get this information from Trump in a way that had some kind of coordination… nicely. Let me just put it, it was done not to do it, and sort of nicely, in cooperation with his representatives. And in the end, he didn’t cooperate. This lawsuit alleges that they should have coordinated with his lawyers, and yet, they tried to.
McCabe: It’s laughable. The language we’ve seen from the lawsuit so far is literally laughable. They say that there are some sort of duty or requirement on the FBI to conduct this sort of activity only with, under the consent of, or with the consent of the person being investigated. That’s actually not a thing. You’re not required to do that. But in this case, as you mentioned, they spent months — half a year, in fact — pursuing, trying to get those documents back with the participation and the consent of Mr. Trump and his representatives. Numerous lawyers they consulted with. And in fact, at one point, the Trump team looked at what they had and only gave some of it back, therefore making the decision to continue to retain the rest of it, which we now know had, you know, dozens and dozens of classified documents in it. So, the — it’s ridiculous. It’s not going anywhere. And the claims in the suit themselves are absurd.
Watch the video above via CNN.
