It “defies rational explanation” to think that the FBI raid of the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida is not motivated by “pure politics,” according to Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer in the Justice Department during the Trump administration.
Clark, whose attempt to investigate allegations of election fraud at the behest of President Donald Trump triggered pushback from many in the Justice Department, said in an interview with NTD that the operation at Trump’s Palm Beach property is “entirely unprecedented.”
The affidavit used in the raid, which is supposed to contain the probable cause that justifies a warrant, could be “something that the President’s lawyers need to do wrangling in order to get access to,” according to Clark. “But they should certainly try. I think that a warrant needs to have that support, and not just be part of a secret process.”
“I still don’t have a copy of the affidavit that was used to obtain the warrant for the search of my house,” Clark said, referring to a search of his Virginia home by federal authorities in late June.
Clark points to the “No one is above the law” narrative pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to news outlets, noting that the same level of scrutiny over the handling of classified documents has never been applied to Democrats.
“When there have been so many document issues that prominent Democrats have had, that had been totally swept under the rug, it defies rational explanation to think that this is really something that is not explainable by pure politics,” he said.
2024 Presidential Run
When asked about Trump’s likely 2024 presidential campaign, Clark said Democrats have been trying to use the Fourteenth Amendment’s insurrection clause to block pro-Trump candidates from running, and they are planning to use this raid to bar Trump from future office.
On Aug. 8, just hours after Trump confirmed reports about the raid, Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias posted on Twitter a section of the U.S. Code, which says anyone who unlawfully conceals or removes or destroys certain documents “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”
The potential violation of that particular section, known as 18 U.S. Code 2071, was debated in 2015 when former Attorney General Michael Mukasey argued that Hillary Clinton would be disqualified from holding office if convicted for wiping out the contents of a private email server she used while serving as secretary of state. Another debate took place in February 2020 after Pelosi was caught on live television ripping up her copy of Trump’s State of the Union speech as she stood behind him.
“Marc Elias is saying that the criminal statute could result in President Trump being barred from future office. And I think it’s clearly part of his plan,” Clark told NTD.
“He had been using an earlier plan of trying to use the Fourteenth Amendment provisions to bar folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn from holding federal office again,” he continued, referring to the Georgia congresswoman and the North Carolina congressman. “So this seems to be a general Democrat plan.”
The top lawyer for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Elias had to testify this May during a trial of his colleague Michael Sussman, who was accused of feeding FBI with false information about an allegedly illicit collusion between Trump and Russia. Sussman was acquitted on May 31.
