Despite their 20-month estrangement, former Vice President Mike Pence expressed worry over the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s residence Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.
‘I share the great concern of millions of Americans about the unprecedented search of President Trump’s personal home,’ Pence tweeted Tuesday afternoon. ‘In American history, no past President of the United States has ever been subjected to a raid on their own house.’ On Monday, Trump acknowledged that FBI investigators had searched Mar-a-Lago, after allegations that officers had been seen leaving the ex-Florida president’s home and private club. Trump screamed at the action, calling it “sad times for our Nation” and claiming that the Biden administration was pursuing him as a political target.
‘After years of finding FBI agents acting on political motivations during our administration, the appearance of continued partisanship by the Justice Department must be addressed,’ Pence added.
‘Today’s move undermines public trust in our justice system, and Attorney General Garland must offer a complete explanation to the American people as to why this action was taken, and he must do so soon,’ said the former vice president. So far, Attorney General Merrick Garland has been silent about the raid.
The Justice Department has not commented on the FBI’s conduct, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
A number of media sites claimed that the raid was in response to an investigation into Trump’s removal of sensitive materials from the White House, rather than the DOJ’s ongoing inquiry into Trump’s activities on January 6.
When the FBI’s probes have gone close to major personalities in their respective parties, both Democrats and Republicans have slammed the agency.
Democrats were outraged by former FBI Director James Comey’s comments regarding the agency’s decision not to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton with mishandling secret information by using a private email server, after publicly calling her “incredibly reckless.”
Comey held a news conference in July 2016, only four months before the presidential election, to make the remarks.
‘This was not your typical bureaucrat who mishandles a single paper. This was far more than that. However, it is not anything that anybody would prosecute,’ Comey argued in a 2018 interview on his choice to describe Clinton’s behavior in this manner.
Comey also notified members of Congress that the Clinton email probe had been reopened approximately two weeks before the 2016 election because new emails had been discovered on a laptop taken from Anthony Weiner, who was then married to key Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Despite Comey’s assurances to Congress that no new evidence had been discovered prior to election day, the reopening of the email probe over the last stretch of the campaign certainly helped Trump narrowly win the 2016 election.
Then, two months into Trump’s presidency, Comey acknowledged that the FBI was looking into whether members of Trump’s 2016 campaign team collaborated with Russia, which had interfered in the election.
Democrats were outraged once again that Comey kept the Trump-Russia investigation quiet in the run-up to the 2016 election while openly discussing the FBI’s Clinton ties.
Comey subsequently said that he anticipated Clinton would win the election, which influenced how he handled the investigations.
According to a 2018 DOJ inspector general’s report, Comey broke the bureau’s discretion policy twice: first with the July 2016 news conference on Clinton and again when he told Congress that the Clinton email probe had been reopened.
Pence’s partisanship concerns were most likely in reference to the ‘FBI lovers’ incident, which included anti-Trump text messages shared between Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page, who were both working on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and having an affair.
After Trump dismissed Comey, Mueller took over the Russia investigation.
When critical text exchanges regarding Trump and his followers were found, Strzok was removed from the investigation.
While Trump-critical communications were just a tiny portion of the 7,000 discovered, Trump often used Strzok and Page as punching bags when claiming followers that the ‘deep state’ was against him.
Trump continued to argue in a campaign-style video published Tuesday that any inquiry into him was contaminated by politics.
‘We are a society that, for the first time, has militarized its police enforcement against the opposite political party,’ the ex-president stated.
The former vice president sent out a series of three tweets expressing that he was deeply concerned by the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago Monday. ‘No former President of the United States has ever been subject to a raid in their personal residence in American history,’ he wrote
Pence also referred to FBI agents ‘found to be acting on political motivation.’ During the Trump years, ‘FBI lovers’ Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were turned into political punching bags for having sent anti-Trump text messages while working on the Mueller probe
Later that day, on Truth Social, Trump described it as a “terrible event that happened yesterday at Mar-a-Lago.”
‘We are no better than a banana republic in the third world,’ he remarked. ‘It is a continuation of Russia, Russia, Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, the Mueller Report on no collusion, and more.’
‘To make things worse, in my judgment, it is all a coordinated assault with Radical Left Democrat state and local D.A.’s and A.G.’s,’ Trump said. Trump is also dealing with legal issues in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis is investigating a plot to invalidate the state’s 2020 presidential election results.
In New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is investigating whether Trump’s enterprises misrepresented the value of assets for loan and tax reasons.
In addition, the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, is pursuing a civil inquiry into whether Trump’s firm exaggerated real estate valuations.
Trump and Pence had a falling out when Pence refused to reverse the 2020 election results while chairing a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
The discussion was cut short by the Capitol incident, in which some Trump fans demanded that Pence be hung.
Trump is also embroiled in investigations of the January 6 assault by the House Select Committee and the Department of Justice.