PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Candidates for Florida's 1st Congressional District are all sounding off about the raid on former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Republican candidates Channel 3 spoke to Tuesday all feel the raid was politically motivated. But one democratic challenger says she thinks it was justified.
Channel 3 met incumbent Congressman Matt Gaetz in Okaloosa County Tuesday afternoon. He says the raid was purely political.
"This is 100 percent a political decision by the FBI and the Department of Justice," Gaetz said.
Gaetz added that he believes the raid had something to do with the Biden Administration wanting to keep the former president from running in 2024.
Channel 3 also spoke with Republican candidate and Marine veteran Mark Lomardo. He is calling for transparency.
Lombardo wants the federal government to answer questions about the raid, which appears to be over possibly possessing classified material.
"I think the American people need to know from the FBI and from the Department of Justice that there is virtually no political agenda on this," Lombardo said. "They need to explain why they did this and what the justification was for it."
Another republican candidate for Congress, former Navy pilot and financial manager Greg Merck, says the raid was done to discredit the former president.
"Clearly threatened by Donald Trump and the presence of Donald Trump," Merck said. "They really don't want him to run in 2024 because there isn't a doubt in their mind that he'll be the nominee, and frankly I don't think any Republicans worth any salt would run against him."
But Democratic candidate for Congress Peggy Schiller believes the raid had merit.
"Because I trust the U.S. justice system," Schiller said. "If the Justice Department went to a judge and the judge was not 100 percent that there was a reasonable chance of finding evidence of a crime, a judge would have never signed off on that search warrant."