OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
11:21 AM – Friday, August 9, 2024
Less than a month after Donald Trump overturned his case involving classified documents, sources have now indicated that the former president is going to sue the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for $100 million in damages over the 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago home.
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Following an FBI raid on August 8th, 2022, pages of sensitive documents that had been kept throughout his presidential years were confiscated from the resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump was later indicted on 37 felony counts by Special Counsel Jack Smith. On all counts, Trump entered a not guilty plea.
Nevertheless, Trump’s defense was that he had declassified the documents before leaving office.
“In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified,” Trump said, according to Politico.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden received only a slap on the wrist for similarly taking classified documents during his time as vice president under former President Barack Obama.
“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” wrote special counsel Robert Hur, the top federal prosecutor in Maryland during the Trump administration who was put in charge to lead the Biden investigation by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January last year.
The “double standards” between Biden and Trump was shocking to many Americans. Those on the right demanded that the rule of law be exercised accordingly and justly, and those on the left claimed that Trump’s classified documents case was different and much worse than Biden’s case.
“THIS HAS NOW PROVEN TO BE A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVE PROSECUTION!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Biden also told his ghostwriter in February 2017, a month after he left the role of vice president, that he “just found all the classified stuff,” referencing his stolen classified documents, downstairs in a home that he was renting in Virginia.
“The ghostwriter deleted audio recordings of his conversations with Biden after learning about the special counsel’s investigation but kept transcripts, Hur said,” according to Reuters.
A memo that was initially acquired by Fox News stated that Trump’s attorneys have now argued that the DOJ’s raid was carried out with a “clear intent to engage in political persecution.”
The document denounces the purported “tortious conduct by the United States against President Trump,” noting the raid’s abuse of process, malicious prosecution, and intrusion of privacy.
Trump’s lawsuit also accuses FBI Director Christopher Wray of conducting a “malicious prosecution” against him, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who designated Smith in 2022 to supervise two federal investigations and the final indictment.
In addition, Trump has previously accused President Biden, to whom Garland answers directly, of masterminding a “witch-hunt” against him.
“Garland and Wray should have never approved a raid and subsequent indictment of President Trump because the well-established protocol with former U.S. presidents is to use non-enforcement means to obtain records of the United States,” said Trump’s attorney, Daniel Epstein, who filed the memo.
He continued, saying that at the absolute least, Garland and Wray ought to have “sought consent” from Trump and should have informed his legal staff.
Epstein gave the DOJ 180 days to reply to the notice when he filed the lawsuit on Monday. If a settlement cannot be reached, the lawsuit will be sent to federal court in the Southern District of Florida.
“What President Trump is doing here is not just standing up for himself – he is standing up for all Americans who believe in the rule of law and believe that you should hold the government accountable when it wrongs you,” Epstein told reporters.
This follows the ruling on July 15th by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to accept Trump’s proposal to dismiss Smith’s federal case.
While citing the Appointments Clause in the Constitution, the judge declared that Smith had been improperly appointed and funded, which ultimately resulted in the dismissal of the whole case.
“The Court is convinced that Special Counsel’s Smith’s prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme—the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law,” Cannon said in her 93-page order.
Additionally, the Supreme Court ruled last month that if an act is executed while the president is performing their primary duty, they are immune from prosecution.
In the recent memo, Epstein contended that there was “no constitutional basis for the search or the subsequent indictment,” citing the high court’s decision as well as Cannon’s ruling.
This is a developing story. Check back for upates.
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