Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has claimed that the “deep state” is planning to assasinate former president Donald Trump and that the FBI planted evidence against him during the raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
“I do not think it’s beyond this administrative state and their deep state apparatus to actually try to work on the assassination of President Trump. I think – I think everything’s on the table,” Mr Bannon said in an interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Infowars.
“I think security ought to be at the highest it’s ever been. And honestly, I think he ought to and I think he should have flown down in Mar-a-Lago this morning, walked out there at noon today, and said, hey, I’m running for president, United States. Suck on that.”
Last month, Mr Bannon was convicted of two counts of ignoring a Congressional subpoena to testify before the January 6 committee and is facing a maximum of two years in prison.
He also referred to the FBI raids at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as a “desecration”.
“We need...you [Donald Trump] need to get to Mar-a-Lago, the exact place that they desecrated, because it was a desecration. They did it on purpose. They understand how Mar-a-Lago resonates with not just Maga [the Make America Great Again movement] but to the American people.”
He described the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as “one of the great buildings in this country” that has seen “many iconic moments”.
The estate hosted a number of important heads of state, notably the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese premier Xi Jinping and Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Mr Trump also coordinated the US’s response to a North Korean missile test from the Palm Beach estate.
Citing these, Mr Bannon said: “So many important things happened there – to go and desecrate it the way they did, particularly over this administrative issue at the National Archives... clearly they’re, as you know, Alex, on a fishing expedition or on a planting expedition, I wouldn’t put it past [them] to have planted stuff ... this is criminal.”
“The FBI and the DOJ are essentially lawless criminal organisations.” he added.
On Monday, the former president’s Palm Beach residence was raided in what appears to be part of an investigation into the removal of official presidential records from the White House.
Mr Trump has condemned the raids as “prosecutorial misconduct” and “the weaponisation of the justice system” meant to keep him from running in the 2024 presidential election.
