The Wall Street Journal editorial board Wednesday condemned the FBI's raid of former President Donald J. Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.
The piece, titled "The FBI’s Dangerous Search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago," warned that Attorney General Merrick Garland, head of President Biden's Department of Justice, risks taking America "down a perilous path".
"Monday’s unannounced Federal Bureau of Investigation search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home isn’t a moment for anyone to cheer," the editors wrote. "The Justice Department is unleashing political furies it can’t control and may not understand, and the risks for the department and the country are as great as they are for Mr. Trump."
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Biden's DOJ has faced accusations of political bias in the past, such as when they labeled parents concerned about Critical Race Theory in schools as "domestic terrorists." Experts warned such a move would have a chilling effect on free speech.
The WSJ editors wrote that "everyone knows" that "an FBI law-enforcement action of this kind against a former American President is unprecedented."
They argued that if the warrant is related to "potential mishandling of classified documents or violations of the Presidential Records Act" then "the raid looks like prosecutorial overkill and a bad mistake."
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"Document disputes are typically settled in negotiation, and that is how Mr. Trump’s disagreement with the National Archives had been proceeding," they noted.
"Didn’t someone at Justice point out that a search in this case would draw comparisons to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information before her 2016 presidential campaign?" the editors asked.
"She was never prosecuted, as Mr. Trump was quick to point out," they continued.
The editors argued that the FBI's actions will throw into question the public's confidence that the government applies equal justice under the law, regardless of one's political views.
The editors also noted that "the political and media pressure is intense on Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Mr. Trump" and that "the FBI search may be a fishing expedition to find evidence related to Jan. 6."
"Then there is the fraught history between Mr. Trump and the FBI and Justice," the editors wrote. "The Russia collusion probe was a fiasco of FBI abuse of process and public deception."
The board noted that to this day the FBI "has a serious credibility problem."
Politicians from across the political spectrum, including Democrats like former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and 2020 Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, have criticized the raid.
