TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNW) — Former President Donald Trump said Monday that the FBI executed a search warrant on his home in Florida, calling it “political persecution.”
Kansas Senator Roger Marshall told The Associated Press he grew up with a great deal of respect for the FBI, but that view is changing.
“The FBI were the good guys. And right now, we’re all concerned who the FBI really is,” Marshall told The Associated Press. “Folks back home are real concerned about what the federal government has become.”
Marshall also said on Newsmax he does not believe the law is being applied equally, claiming the FBI ignored “Hunter Biden’s issues and Hillary Clinton’s issues as well.”
Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids told the Kansas City Star much is still unknown about the raid but noted, “No one is above the law.”
Congressman Ron Estes issued a statement in a press release.
“The raiding of a former president’s home by FBI agents is unprecedented and a double standard after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly had classified information on a home server and Hunter Biden’s laptop contains evidence of Chinese business dealings with the current president of the United States. This action undermines the credibility of the FBI and further stokes division in our nation. We should ensure justice is done, but it should not be politically driven.”
-Congressman Ron Estes in a news release
Trump, disclosing the search in a lengthy statement, asserted that agents had opened up a safe at his home and described their work as an “unannounced raid” that he likened to “prosecutorial misconduct.”
The remarkable execution of a search warrant at a former president’s home comes as the Justice Department has accelerated its investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and further examined the actions Trump took to overturn the 2020 election results to remain in power.
Eric Trump, one of former President Donald Trump’s sons, said in an interview late Monday that the FBI’s search at his father’s Mar-a-Lago home earlier in the day was focused on documents sought by the National Archives.
Trump and his allies sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from winning another term in 2024 — even though the Biden White House said it had no prior knowledge of it, and the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Trump five years ago and served as a high-ranking official in a Republican-led Justice Department.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.