The FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago is an escalation of an ongoing attack on anyone who dares to upset the political status quo in Washington, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) says.
"I think a lot of my constituents were shocked, frankly, across the political spectrum. But obviously, the more supportive of President Trump, the more upset they were," Davidson told The Epoch Times and NTD as part of a special report on the raid airing on Aug. 11 on EpochTV at 9 p.m.
"I think for anyone who doubted that there was a swamp when Donald Trump was saying 'drain the swamp,' now I think there's true believers. So it's historic."
In support of his statement, Davidson pointed out that the FBI still has many of the same people who spent years supporting a Russia collusion narrative that was based on a falsified warrant.
More concerning, Davidson says, is that the FBI appears to have wholly ended its pretense of objectivity.
Davidson pointed out to The Epoch Times that former IRS official Lois Lerner, Bill Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger, and even Hillary Clinton allegedly mishandled and destroyed classified information but avoided raids by the FBI.
He then pointed out that the FBI has taken no action on Hunter Biden, despite a mountain of evidence of suspect business dealings.
"No accountability for Hunter Biden, no action on that; no action on any number of things that they could have taken action on, like for example, targeting of Supreme Court justices," Davidson said.
He added it is really hard to believe that the bureau believes that it's objective.
Davidson says the message the FBI is sending is clear.
"Hey, if you support the cause, we got your back. But if you're working against us, as [current Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer promised Donald Trump, they have six ways to Sunday to wreck you.
"And they seem to have been very focused on doing that to Donald Trump."
Davidson added the FBI isn't just targeting Trump; it's also targeting his supporters.
"[The FBI] seized the chairman of the Freedom Caucus's phone. They didn't do it in a no-knock warrant raid in the middle of the night with CNN cameras staged in the street or anything. But they did track him down."
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Scott Perry's (R-Pa.) phone was returned to him, but Davidson said that the FBI action to track Perry down was deliberately intended to paint him as a criminal.
Furthermore, the message is that if the FBI can target people such as Trump and Perry, imagine what they could do to an everyday American, he said.
"I think they're trying to intimidate and scare people from, you know, being supportive of Trump or being too opposed to the status quo," Davidson said. "You know, stay within the mainstream, don't push back against the status quo."
The response to the FBI raid has been overwhelmingly negative among Americans who support Trump, Davidson said.
He said Trump supporters are rightly upset about the raid and how they're expected to respond to it. Davidson says he hopes it doesn't go beyond anger into illegal actions and instead energizes people to vote.
"If this had happened to a Democrat president, you know, we might have more of the summer of 2020, where it was covered by the press [as] 'mostly peaceful protests,' but we know that mostly peaceful means it wasn't peaceful."
Trump supporters are very aware that they may be targeted if they protest against the latest treatment of the former president, Davidson says.
"But if [their support] was the slightest bit of anything that was run afoul, the mainstream media and, frankly, many of our federal agencies would treat it as ... some sort of, you know, violent uprising by the right and so, I think people on the right are cautious."
Davidson said he hopes it doesn't come to violence but acknowledged a growing frustration among Republicans over an apparent two-tier system of justice.
"Unfortunately, this reinforces it because the people that we've suspected had no accountability, like the Clinton Foundation, as an example, [or] like Hunter Biden.
Holding the FBI Accountable
Davidson stated that if Republicans retake a majority in the House in November, they need to step up and not just hold hearings about the FBI's actions."We are going to have to cut off funds and say, 'Hey, we ... don't want to shut the government down. We want to fund our government. But we're unwilling to fund a government that does these things or fails to do these other things.'"
Davidson said the FBI isn't objective or applying justice objectively. While he said there was hope that Director Christopher Wray would return the FBI to a non-partisan agency, "On the contrary, every step seems more focused on undermining the confidence of ordinary Americans."
However, if "you've got the far left of the Democratic Party's agenda in mind, the FBI seems to have your back," he said.
He notes that the FBI is "incredibly powerful" and Republicans can't try to hold them accountable halfway; the GOP must "get after that in a very serious way."
Even as he wants to be fair to the working men and women at the FBI, Davidson said Republicans need to acknowledge that top leadership at the bureau is corrupt, as is "the IRS, banking regulators, all the EPA, all these agencies, Securities and Exchange Commission," and they're abusing their power.
"The far left has really gotten a firm grip on the administrative state.
"They've used the influence over the administrative state to get a firm grip into much of corporate America," he said. "So it's almost like there's collusion between these government agencies and the top level.
"No one loves big government like big business, so some of our biggest businesses are also working in concert with these biggest regulatory agencies."
