“Make no mistake,” Hannity mentioned, “if you are associated with Donald Trump in any way, you better cross all your I’s and dot all your T’s, because they’re coming for you with the full force of the federal government.”
Hannity was among the many conservative and right-leaning media figures coming to the protection of Trump within the hours after his membership was searched in a court-authorized continuing that’s half of a long-running investigation of whether or not paperwork had been taken to the previous president’s non-public golf membership and residence as a substitute of despatched to the National Archives after he left workplace.
Even although the investigation is trying into whether or not Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes and different written communications associated to a president’s official duties, Trump allies went on right-leaning cable news networks to denounce the search for hours on Monday night time as “the worst attack on this republic in modern history.”
As photos of Trump supporters waving flags and holding indicators saying, “In Trump I Trust,” performed on Fox News, host Laura Ingraham demanded that Republicans purge the federal authorities in the event that they retake power in Congress.
“When we get power back, it’s time to hold everyone accountable — the military leadership, the civilian leadership, the civil service, those in Congress who have abused their power,” she mentioned. “All of them have to be held accountable.”
Ingraham: When we get power again, it’s time to carry everybody accountable.. the army management, the civilian management, the civil service, these in Congress who’ve abused their power pic.twitter.com/RnnXH6uL1M
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 9, 2022
Former Trump adviser and right-wing podcaster Stephen Okay. Bannon mentioned on Fox News that the FBI, an company led by a director who was nominated by Trump, was “the Gestapo.”
“We’re at war,” mentioned Bannon, who has been convicted of contempt of Congress for his refusal to offer paperwork or testimony to a House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, assault.
The search is the most recent historic improvement in Trump’s tenuous and tortured relationship with the Justice Department, each throughout and after his time within the White House. While looking a former president’s property to search for attainable proof of a criminal offense is very uncommon, such a search is feasible so long as it receives approval at the highest ranges of the Justice Department.
The investigation apparently started months in the past. The National Archives and Records Administration mentioned in January that it had retrieved 15 bins of paperwork and different gadgets from Mar-a-Lago, and Archives officers famous at the time that the bins ought to have been turned over when Trump left the White House.
Trump, who in contrast the search to Watergate in a prolonged assertion, accused the FBI of “even” breaking into his protected, however didn’t give further particulars about what federal brokers had been in search of on Monday. He additionally claimed, with out proof, that Democrats had been weaponizing the “justice system” in opposition to him by means of a search he known as not “necessary or appropriate.”
GOP allies have echoed Trump’s claims that the search amounted to a political assault meant to harm him if he runs for president once more. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) mentioned in a press release that the Justice Department had “reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” whereas Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) pushed on Twitter to “DEFUND THE FBI!”
Some of the strongest reactions from conservative and right-leaning media began trickling in on Fox News on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” the place the host known as for FBI Director Christopher A. Wray’s firing, and visitor Dan Bongino in contrast what occurred to Trump to one thing that may unfold in a “third-world” nation. On “Hannity,” Fox News host Mark Levin known as into the present and claimed the search of the previous president’s property was not solely egregious however historic for all of the unsuitable causes.
“This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history. Period,” Levin mentioned. “And it’s not just an attack on Donald Trump. It’s an attack on everybody who supports him.”
In the identical hour of tv, Eric Trump got here to his father’s protection by claiming to Hannity that his dad has lengthy loved protecting information and different gadgets through the years.
“My father always kept press clippings, newspaper articles, pictures, notes from us,” he mentioned. “He had boxes. He moved out of the White House. He’s very collaborative. If you want to search for anything, come right ahead. It was an open-door policy, and all of a sudden 30 agents descend upon Mar-a-Lago?”
A typical theme all through the night time’s protection amongst right-leaning news shops was that the search was meant to impede Donald Trump’s potential run for the White House in 2024. On Newsmax, former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik even went as far as to counsel, with out proof, that he was nervous concerning the “assassination” of Trump because of him doubtlessly working for president once more.
“This is the first time in my lifetime that I would say I am deathly afraid for Donald Trump,” Kerik informed Newsmax host Eric Bolling.
Just days after a Texas jury determined that he should pay greater than $49 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the dad and mom of a Sandy Hook faculty taking pictures sufferer for his false claims concerning the mass killing, Alex Jones welcomed Trump confidant Roger Stone on his Infowars present to lament what he known as “a very sad day for America.”
Jones and Stone, who’ve been subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the pro-Trump revolt at the U.S. Capitol, agreed that what occurred to Trump was “the kind of thing you expect to see in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany or communist Cuba.”
Alex Jones and Roger Stone name an emergency broadcast over the Trump raid: “It’s a very sad day for America. This is the kind of thing you expect to see in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany or communist Cuba.” pic.twitter.com/Lsyr4M2wvV
— Ron Filipkowski ?? (@RonFilipkowski) August 9, 2022
As pundits went on air to defend Trump, dozens of the previous president’s supporters camped outdoors of Mar-a-Lago to indicate their love for Trump, although he wasn’t at the Palm Beach residence. Videos and pictures posted to social media present automobiles and vans waving American flags and Trump flags, together with one automobile that had a Trump-Pence banner with the previous vice chairman’s identify crossed out.
The sympathetic protection of Trump following the search of Mar-a-Lago on conservative, right-leaning and far-right shops was known as out by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday morning.
“They’re saying ugly things on Fox News,” he mentioned on “Morning Joe.” He added, “In America, even in the age of Trump, no man is above the law.”
While Fox News continued to cowl the search of Trump’s residence, “Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy needed to remind contributor Joe Concha on Tuesday that Trump had appointed Wray, the FBI director who Concha railed as being “partisan.”
“I don’t know if Trump was such a big fan of [Wray] though when he was in office,” Concha mentioned.
Doocey concluded, “Not today.”
Devlin Barrett, Mariana Alfaro, Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany contributed to this report.