Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), one of the candidates at the top of Donald Trump’s vice presidential list, refused to condemn the former president’s false allegations that the FBI was “locked and loaded, ready” to eliminate him during the 2022 raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate.
In a fundraising email sent last week, Trump claimed that FBI agents who searched his Florida home as the confidential documents he took with him as he left the White House were poised to shoot him, in a move he claimed was orchestrated by the president Joe Biden to intimidate him.
“It has just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE attack at Mar-a-Lago,” the email reads. “You know they are eager to do the unthinkable…Joe Biden was locked and loaded, ready to take me out and put my family in danger.”
Trump appeared to be distorting the essence of the standard language used in the search warrant that authorizes the use of deadly force only if necessary. Attorney General Merrick Garland said this “standard search operations plan” was used even when the F.B.I. searched Biden’s house to obtain documents and called Trump’s claims “extremely dangerous.” (Biden was under investigation for handling classified documents, but ultimately was not charged.)
In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Scott sided with Trump as he repeatedly dodged questions about the former president’s comments.
“I don’t agree with Attorney General Garland on any issue,” Scott said. “I will say that I saw the video of the FBI SWAT team raiding Mar-a-Lago. I didn’t see the same video of them breaking into Joe Biden’s garage. So I would love to have that comparison.”
The South Carolina Republican said Trump’s treatment in this case indicates the existence of a “two-tier judicial system,” even though the same policy was followed for the search of Biden’s home.
“It is very difficult to see this justice system currently working fairly for both Donald Trump and Republicans as we have seen the kid gloves and isolation around Joe Biden and his family,” Scott said.
After repeated questioning from CNN’s Dana Bash about whether Trump’s comments about the attack concern him, Scott switched to a different topic: student protests over the war in Gaza.
“Well, the rhetoric that really worries me doesn’t come from [Trump’s] emails,” he said. “They are coming to college campuses as we see real physical violence against our Jewish students.”
Scott, a former candidate for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, is reportedly among the leading candidates to be Trump’s running mate in November’s presidential election.
Federal Public Ministry on Friday asked the judge presiding over Trump’s confidential documents case to impose a gag order on the former president, saying his words “put at risk the law enforcement officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and threatened the integrity of these proceedings.”
The trial of the case has been postponed indefinitely.
