Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) said on Sunday that the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was “extreme” and unnecessary while also denouncing Republicans calling to defund the law enforcement agency.
The Texas congressman and former Navy SEAL told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union on Sunday that it’s “hard to justify” the Justice Department’s decision to obtain a warrant to search the former president’s home for classified documents. Crenshaw added that there were “ways to resolve” the problem of Trump allegedly improperly keeping classified material at his home and resort that wouldn’t have required the use of law enforcement agents. However, Crenshaw distanced himself from some GOP rhetoric on the raid, calling it “crazy.”
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“Oh yes, it’s crazy,” Crenshaw responded when asked by Tapper about recent comments by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and New York Republican congressional candidate Carl Paladino.
Greene has called for defunding of FBI in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid, and Paladino told a New York radio station that Attorney General Merrick Garland “probably should be executed.” Paladino later said that he was being “facetious.”
“It makes us seem like extremist Democrats, right?” Crenshaw said on Sunday. “And so Marjorie and AOC can go join the defund the law enforcement club if they want. Ninety-nine percent of Republicans are not on that train.”
He added the criticisms that most Republicans are leveling against the FBI and DOJ are “fully warranted” and that “it is not those criticisms that lead to a crazy person attacking an FBI [building].”
Crenshaw was referencing the attempted breach of the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office by an armed man in the days following the Mar-a-Lago raid.
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The FBI also recently arrested a Pennsylvania man for allegedly threatening to kill its agents.
“That’s completely wrong, but that’s not where 99% of Republicans are at, of course,” Crenshaw said of extreme rhetoric and violent actions in the wake of the raid.
