President Joe Biden’s relationship with the Justice Department has become more complicated after the FBI enforced a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and office in Florida.
With presidential son Hunter Biden under scrutiny by federal law enforcement officials, the White House has from the start aimed to keep a healthy distance from the Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. The situation grew thornier after the FBI’s Aug. 9 search of Trump’s Palm Beach estate.
The White House insists Biden and his aides learned of the episode through news reports. But that has not stopped Republicans from accusing Biden of weaponizing federal law enforcement against his political opponents, motivating the GOP base, and providing the party with fundraising fodder before November’s midterm elections.
Like the Justice Department and the FBI, White House officials, including press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, have avoided commenting on the raid by agencies led by Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in 2017.
A hands-off approach is for the best, said Jessica Levinson, professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. The FBI, part of the Justice Department, always needs to be seen as independent, she said — particularly when it’s three months out from the midterm elections.
“At this point, the most important thing Biden can do is to stay away,” Levinson told the Washington Examiner. “We don’t know where this investigation will go. We do know the American public needs to understand that the DOJ and FBI are engaged in a legal investigation, not a political one.”
Political analyst Paul Henderson, who was Vice President Kamala Harris’s chief of administration when she was San Francisco’s district attorney, cited the raid’s probable cause warrant signed by federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart. That means Reinhart decided it was “appropriate” to seek corroborating evidence that would “probably” support the Justice Department’s and FBI’s suspicions concerning Trump, according to Henderson.
“Those who are focusing on the Biden administration’s response to this are missing the real issue entirely,” he said. “They should wait to see what the Department of Justice uncovered at the raid or, at the very least, what they hoped to uncover at the raid before jumping to any conclusion.”
Yet Bud Cummins, a former Arkansas U.S. attorney nominated by President George W. Bush, downplayed the likelihood of any wrongdoing on the part of Trump. And the FBI, under Wray’s leadership, deserves some scrutiny, too, Cummins said.
The FBI director has not demonstrated that he grasps the FBI’s “dire problems” or that he is “doing something to change it,” Cummins said, without specifying problems in the FBI’s performance. “There’s an enormous amount of power, probably too much power, put in the hands of federal law enforcement, and to allow it to be misused like this is very disturbing.”
FBI agents’ eight-hour presence on the grounds Mar-a-Lago was unprecedented in that a former president was the target. An estimated 30-40 FBI investigators participated, having worked in advance with the Secret Service, which guards Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s primary residence.
FBI agents were reportedly looking for documents taken improperly by Trump and associates after his presidency ended. The National Archives and Records Administration had already retrieved 15 boxes of materials in February, some of which were purportedly classified and damaged. The FBI collected another dozen boxes this week while inside Mar-a-Lago after monthslong talks between the agency and Trump’s team, including on how the former president stored the records.
The episode coincides with an increasing amount of overlap between the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation and that of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Garland reiterated that “no person is above the law in this country” when reporters pressed him last month on whether his department would prosecute a former president over the Capitol. He circulated a memo reminding his investigators and attorneys to be neutral and impartial, particularly in an election year.
Some possible 2024 Republican presidential candidates have rallied behind Trump after the raid despite many of them complaining about 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. However, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) was more nuanced than other prospective 2024 Republican candidates, channeling the likes of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) by encouraging the public against “rushing to judgment.”
McConnell’s and Scott’s reactions contrast sharply with that of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). After a federal appeals court ruled that the House Ways and Means Committee is entitled to Trump’s tax returns that have been under apparent IRS audit for years, McCarthy warned about comeuppance against Democrats if Republicans win the majority in November. House Republicans have repeatedly pledged a series of investigations about Hunter Biden, whose foreign business dealings and tax affairs are already under scrutiny by the Justice Department and the FBI.
