{"id":105681,"date":"2024-05-23T18:04:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T18:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/garland-calls-trumps-false-claim-of-biden-doj-plan-to-potentially-assassinate-him-during-fbis-mar-a-lago-search-extremely-dangerous\/"},"modified":"2024-05-23T18:04:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T18:04:39","slug":"garland-calls-trumps-false-claim-of-biden-doj-plan-to-potentially-assassinate-him-during-fbis-mar-a-lago-search-extremely-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/garland-calls-trumps-false-claim-of-biden-doj-plan-to-potentially-assassinate-him-during-fbis-mar-a-lago-search-extremely-dangerous\/","title":{"rendered":"Garland calls Trump&#8217;s false claim of Biden DOJ plan to potentially assassinate him during FBI&#8217;s Mar-a-Lago search &#8216;extremely dangerous&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/syndication.abcaudio.com\/files\/2024-05-23\/Getty_52324_MerrickGarland.jpg\" alt><figcaption>Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>(WASHINGTON) &#8212; Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday slammed former President Donald Trump for insinuating President Joe Biden authorized his potential assassination during the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 for confidential government material, pointing out that a similar Justice Department memo on the use of deadly force was also used in the FBI search of Biden&#8217;s Wilmington, Delaware, home in January 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Garland called Trump&#8217;s accusation, which came after documents were unsealed Tuesday by the special counsel investigating the ongoing federal probe into those missing documents, &#8220;false and extremely dangerous.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The document that has been referred to in the allegation is the Justice Department&#8217;s standard policy, limiting the use of force as the FBI advises it as part of the standard operations plan for searches,&#8221; he told reporters at an unrelated news conference. &#8220;And in fact, it was even used in the consensual search of President Biden&#8217;s home.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As part of the Aug. 8, 2022, operation at Mar-a-Lago, FBI agents were given a standard policy document that limited the use of deadly force, according to the unsealed memo.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI echoed Garland&#8217;s comments in a updated statement Thursday, noting that its use of a &#8220;deadly force&#8221; policy statement was included when agents searched Biden&#8217;s Delaware home a few months later over the same issue, &#8220;as is standard practice for all FBI operations orders.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter,&#8221; the agency said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>This was the FBI&#8217;s second response this week over Trump&#8217;s false claims, which he made in a Truth Social post and fundraising letter Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Trump falsely claimed Biden was &#8220;locked &amp; loaded ready to take me out,&#8221; in the letter. In the Truth Social post, the former president claimed he was &#8220;shown Reports&#8221; that Biden&#8217;s DOJ &#8220;AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE&#8221; in their search of the property for classified documents.<\/p>\n<p>The memo was part of a &#8216;Law Enforcement Operations Order&#8217; drawn up by agents preparing to carry out the search of Mar-a-Lago, after a magistrate judge agreed the government had shown probable cause that agents would find evidence of unlawfully retained national defense information and obstruction of justice on the premises.<\/p>\n<p>Agents ultimately recovered around 100 documents with classification markings &#8212; months after the government subpoenaed Trump for any remaining in his possession, and after the government said it gathered evidence Trump had misled his own lawyers to sign a false certification asserting all such documents had been returned.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force,&#8221; the FBI said in a statement Tuesday. &#8220;No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Multiple former FBI and DOJ officials also confirmed the standard nature of the inclusion of the deadly force policy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Anytime the [FBI] takes an adversarial action like executing a search warrant, there is a deadly force policy,&#8221; former DOJ official and ABC News contributor Sarah Isgur tweeted. &#8220;If there is danger to you or public and there&#8217;s no alternatives, you are authorized to use deadly force. This is standard policy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Trump and two co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to all charges against them and denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>Trump&#8217;s attorneys in their filing Tuesday made no such accusation that the inclusion of the policy showed Biden was preparing to assassinate Trump, and it&#8217;s not immediately clear whether they had shared the information &#8212; part of a vast trove of discovery in his case &#8212; with Trump before it being unsealed.<\/p>\n<p>While Trump said he first learned of the filing after being &#8220;shown Reports&#8221; about it after court proceedings were finished in his New York state criminal hush money case, Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene later posted on X that she &#8220;made sure&#8221; Trump knew about the false claim the &#8220;Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate&#8221; him.<\/p>\n<p>The operations order further indicated how agents were well aware Trump would not be present at the property during the search, as it was carried out during Mar-a-Lago&#8217;s off-season when Trump normally resides at his property in Bedminster, New Jersey.<\/p>\n<p>They did, however, include a contingency plan in the event Trump showed up at the property mid-search, at which time they said FBI personnel on site would be prepared &#8220;to engage with&#8221; him and his Secret Service security detail. The full context shows there&#8217;s no suggestion of the situation escalating into violence, and that it was more about assigning points of contact responsible for speaking with members of Trump&#8217;s detail.<\/p>\n<p>The order also further bolsters testimony from the former director of the FBI&#8217;s Washington, D.C., field office Steve D&#8217;Antuono, who previously testified to Congress he was &#8220;adamant&#8221; agents executing the warrant &#8220;didn&#8217;t do a show of force.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t even a show of force, right, because we were all in agreement,&#8221; D&#8217;Antuono said in an exchange with Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. &#8220;No raid jackets, no blazed FBI &#8230; We weren&#8217;t bringing any like FBI vehicles, everything that was reported about helicopters and a hundred people descending on, like, a &#8216;Die Hard&#8217; movie, was completely untrue, right? That is not how we played it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The operation order shows case agents on scene were instructed to dress &#8220;business casual&#8221; with &#8220;unmarked polo or collared shirts&#8221; and other law enforcement equipment concealed.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images (WASHINGTON) &#8212; Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday slammed former President Donald Trump for insinuating President Joe Biden authorized his potential assassination during the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 for confidential government material, pointing out that a similar Justice Department memo on the<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/garland-calls-trumps-false-claim-of-biden-doj-plan-to-potentially-assassinate-him-during-fbis-mar-a-lago-search-extremely-dangerous\/\">Read More &rarr;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,31,2],"tags":[273,271,276,274,270,123,275,133,124,272,102,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}