Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday dismissed the former president donald trumpthe claim that the Biden administration authorized the FBI use deadly force against him during a search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents.
“This allegation is false and extremely dangerous,” Garland said at a news conference.
Garland was responding to Trump’s text this week on Truth Social that he had been shown reports indicating “that Crooked Joe BidenTHE DOJ, in its illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.
The Trump campaign made a similar claim in a fundraising email that claimed “Joe Biden was locked and loaded, ready to eliminate me.”
Trump was in New Jersey when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
In making the accusations, Trump appeared to be citing recently unsealed court files related to the 2022 survey.
Garland said Thursday that the document in question set out a standard policy.
“The document referred to in the complaint is the Department of Justice’s standard policy limiting the use of force. As the FBI reports, it is part of the standard operations plan for searches. And in fact, it was even used in the consensual search of President Biden’s home,” Garland said.
A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Garland’s comments were not the first time the Justice Department has objected to a characterization of Trump.
In a rare statement Tuesday night, the FBI said it “followed standard protocol in this search, as we do for all search warrants” and that no additional steps were ordered for Mar-a-Lago.
In accordance with Department of Justice policy, law enforcement officers are only authorized to use force in the absence of other safe alternatives. Deadly force is permitted only “when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the object of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or another person,” the policy states.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he knowingly withheld national defense information in connection with classified documents that were discovered at Mar-a-Lago after he left office and that he ordered a Mar-a-Lago employee to delete the property security video. . The trial was postponed indefinitely.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
