Donald Trump’s niece, author and psychologist Mary Trump, appeared on cable news just hours after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, saying that her uncle is panicked by the actions of the federal authorities.
The FBI raided the home on Monday and Mr Trump “may have been told it was coming”, according to his niece, but she added that he wouldn’t have thought that the agency would really go through with it in the end.
Mr Trump wasn’t present at the residence at the time of the raid, instead issuing a fuming statement from Trump Tower in New York City. A lot of information concerning the raid remains unconfirmed, such as if Mr Trump was told in advance, but in his statement, he called the action “unannounced”.
“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats, who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections,” Mr Trump claimed in his statement.
It’s been reported that the FBI was looking for documents Mr Trump is thought to have brought with him when he left the White House in January 2021 that should have been handed over to the National Archives.
The Department of Justice is also investigating the Capitol riot on January 6 2021, including Mr Trump’s actions in connection to the insurrection.
Mary Trump said the FBI raid would have been “a bit of a shock” to the former president.
“This is just an example, in a very long line of examples, of Donald’s narcissism and sense of entitlement,” she said. “He may have known it was coming but he could not possibly believe it was coming because it never has. So I think that’s where that panic is coming from.”
“How is your uncle going to sleep tonight?” MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell asked.
“You know, probably as well as he always sleeps – which is to say, not well. Because, you know, there are so many things dogging him in the last many years. He was in New York today because he needs to sit for a deposition in another case. So it is all coming sort of fast and furious,” Ms Trump.
She added that he has “clear affection for the autocrat, for the authoritarian”.
According to the upcoming book The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Mr Trump once asked his then Chief of Staff John Kelly, a former Marine General, “you f***ing generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
Gen Kelly asked “which generals” Mr Trump was speaking about.
“The German generals in World War II,” Mr Trump is reported to have said.
“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Gen Kelly said, according to an excerpt published in The New Yorker.
Mr Trump still claimed that the generals were “totally loyal” to the Nazi leader, according to Mr Baker and Ms Glasser.
“In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition,” the authors write.
Ms Trump commented on this episode during her MSNBC appearance on Monday night, saying that Mr Trump believes that “that’s what people are for – to be loyal to him, to do his bidding”.
She added that Attorney General Merrick Garland “is the epitome of the kind of man that Donald is contemptuous of”.
While it remains unclear if Mr Garland personally approved of Monday night’s raid, it’s likely that such a measure required to be signed off on by the highest echelons of the Department of Justice.
“It never occurred to him that Garland would have the intestinal fortitude to, well, not go after him, to do his job, quite honestly, and hold Donald accountable,” Ms Trump told MSNBC.
Mr O’Donnell said, “this kind of thing couldn’t have happened without his lawyers knowing. There were plenty of hints”.
“They’re not really breaking in, they’re just doing their job,” Ms Trump said.
