Tea Party Patriots Action, the long-influential conservative group, has filed a federal complaint against the magistrate who approved the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s winter home, the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In a long complaint filed in the Judicial Council of the 11th Circuit, Tea Party Patriots CEO Jenny Beth Martin’s argument was to the point: Florida-based Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart had it out for Trump.
“Judge Reinhart has a conflict of interest and a pattern and history of hostility to President Trump,” said the filing, which listed several examples including social media attacks and donations to anti-Trump critics, such as former President Barack Obama and 2016 GOP foe Jeb Bush.
Martin’s legal complaint, provided to Secrets, seeks to have the judge removed from the case and even dumped from the bench.
“Judge Reinhart should be disciplined and removed as a federal magistrate because of his failure to meet the standards of ethical conduct and character necessary for the public to have confidence in the nonpartisan role of a judge in a matter of this extreme public interest,” the sixth of seven charges in the ethics complaint said.
Reinhart signed off on the raid and has subsequently leaned to making some of the search warrant public, as Trump and the media have sought.
On Monday, the West Palm Beach magistrate gave the Justice Department and the FBI until tomorrow to argue against the release.
In the meantime, critics of his earlier action to OK the search for classified documents inside the resort have dug up ample evidence of Reinhart’s anti-Trump liberal past, including donations and social media attacks. Martin also cited a case involving Hillary Clinton in which Reinhart recused himself as an example that he should have followed in the Mar-a-Lago case.
“The entire episode of the unprecedented search of the former president’s home, authorized by a political appointee of President Trump’s successor, and approved by a federal magistrate who has been outspoken in his opposition to and loathing of President Trump threatens the principle of ‘equal justice under law’ and the confidence of the American people in an unbiased judiciary,” the complaint said.
