Donald Trump turned his fired on a longtime favourite target on Thursday after Attorney General Merrick Garland called his bluff and filed a motion to unseal the search warrant used to justify the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
In a Truth Social post that came as Mr Garland publicly addressed the Monday search of his Florida resort and home, Mr Trump questioned why the Justice Department was not investigating Barack Obama for presidential records that the Obama presidential library is digitising for later publication.
“I continue to ask, what happened to the 33 million pages taken to Chicago by President Obama?” Mr Trump complained.
“The Fake News Media refuses to talk about that,” he continued. “They want it CANCELED!”
The post comes as it has been reported that Mr Trump is under investigation for the illegal retention and removal of classified documents from the White House during the final days of his presidency. Mr Obama is known to have gone through the proper channels, specifically the National Archives, to obtain documents for use in his presidential library, and has not been accused by any credible source, including the Archives, of retaining any classified materials for the project.
A spree of further posts followed, with Mr Trump claiming that his attorneys were complying with the National Archives in its quest to return the classified documents.
“My attorneys and representatives were cooperating fully, and very good relationships had been established. The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it. They asked us to put an additional lock on a certain area - DONE! Everything was fine, better than that of most previous Presidents, and then, out of nowhere and with no warning, Mar-a-Lago was raided, at 6:30 in the morning, by VERY large numbers of agents, and even ‘safecrackers.’ They got way ahead of themselves. Crazy!” the former president wrote.
“Just learned that agents went through the First Lady’s closets and rummaged through her clothing and personal items. Surprisingly, left area in a relative mess. Wow!” another read.
The judge overseeing the case has reportedly ordered Justice Department officials to confer with Mr Trump’s attorneys to see if they will contest the motion to unseal the warrant. If Mr Trump’s team does not, it could be made public within days.
Republicans continued to cry foul on social media, with some falsely equating Mr Garland’s refusal to discuss the case further as a tacit admission that the raid was unfounded.
Mr Garland also responded to those criticisms on Thursday, stating that the Justice Department would not have taken such an action lightly and sternly condemning the criticism of the integrity of those agents involved in the raid.
It remains unclear at this point if Mr Trump and his team will contest the unsealing of the warrant, which could potentially reveal embarrassing information about why the Justice Department is investigating him.
