Trump’s Resolve Strengthened by FBI Raid, Texas Congressman Says

Trump’s Resolve Strengthened by FBI Raid, Texas Congressman Says
Former President Donald Trump waves while walking to a vehicle outside of Trump Tower in New York on Aug. 10, 2022. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)
Jeff Louderback
8/11/2022
Updated:
8/12/2022

Former President Donald Trump’s resolve to “push back on corruption that’s become entrenched in many of the agencies in Washington D.C.” has been strengthened by the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence, according to Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas).

Cloud was one of around a dozen members of the Republican Study Committee who met with Trump over dinner at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, a day after the Aug. 8 raid, which has been characterized by Trump and his allies as an attempt from Democrats to keep him from running for president again.

“Not only has the FBI’s raid of President Trump’s home fueled his spirit and energized his supporters—but for those on the fence, it’s pulled back the curtain on the deep partisan bias which has become entrenched in much of the bureaucracy,” Cloud told The Epoch Times.

According to a statement from Trump on Aug. 8, “a large group of FBI agents” raided his home at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

The event, Trump said, was a “weaponization of the justice system” and an “attack by the radical left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for president in 2024.”

Trump’s second-oldest son, Eric Trump, said that FBI agents breached a personal safe that was empty. Agents wouldn’t permit Trump’s representatives to oversee the 10-hour search and removed boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb told The Epoch Times.

Agents were given access to a storage facility at the residence in June but didn’t leave with anything then, Bobb added.

The FBI raid is reportedly connected to a Department of Justice (DOJ) exploration into whether Trump took presidential records after he left office on Jan. 20, 2021.

Trump representatives have repeatedly said that he cooperated with the National Archives and Records Administration on the matter.

The DOJ and FBI have not publicly commented on the case, while the White House has denied having had any knowledge of the FBI raid before it was executed.

“The FBI has become partisan and this doesn’t pass the sniff test by any sort of means that we’re raiding the house of a former president,“ Cloud told NTD’s Capitol Report. ”This is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be happening in the United States.”

Over the course of several years, the FBI has advanced on a trajectory of “a corrupt politicization of law enforcement in our country, something that goes against everything that America is supposed to stand for,” Cloud added.

“I’m not trying to appoint unfounded allegations, but we’ve seen the FBI participate in the spreading of disinformation leading up to a presidential campaign. And we’ve seen them, even before President Trump was in office, work to help spread this Russian collusion narrative. They participate in this while turning a blind eye to Hunter Biden’s (laptop) story, calling it discrimination. And meanwhile, they’re targeting parents at school board meetings.”

The FBI also ignored “what was going on with Hillary Clinton having classified documents on a server in her home,” Cloud added.

“The American people are rightfully not trusting of the FBI at this point,” Cloud said. “Even if they come out with a reason, it’s hard to take it at face value right now because we’ve seen the bad actions that have happened over the last several years.”

The unprecedented move against Trump has not happened to any other former president of the United States, Cloud pointed out.

“We’ve got a job as the Oversight Committee to push back on this and to really get to the bottom of what’s going on and to help bring sunlight to the corrupt actions that are going on and then to work to get it out,” Cloud said. “Already this week, the Oversight Committee has sent a letter to the National Archives to preserve their records for anything involving this.

“We need to look at revising our house rules to allow for something called the home run rule that would allow us to zero out the budgets of individuals and bad actors in our government. We’ve got a lot of work to do to restore the trust of the American people in this government.”

Jeff Louderback covers news and features on the White House and executive agencies for The Epoch Times. He also reports on Senate and House elections. A professional journalist since 1990, Jeff has a versatile background that includes covering news and politics, business, professional and college sports, and lifestyle topics for regional and national media outlets.
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