‘I would not put assassination beyond these people’: Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik claims Democrats will try KILL Trump if FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago doesn’t spark criminal charges because ‘they’ve tried everything else to stop him’
- Bernard Kerik warned that he was ‘deathly afraid’ for the former president’s life
- He said he feared the Left had exhausted all other efforts to stop the 76-year-old
- The FBI searched Trump’s estate in probe into whether he took classified records
- The ex-president revealed the raid and said the Feds broke into a safe at mansion
Democrats will try to assassinate Donald Trump if an FBI raid on his Florida home does not lead to criminal charges, a former NYPD commissioner has claimed.
Bernard Kerik warned he was ‘deathly afraid’ for the former president after the feds descended on Mar-a-Lago yesterday morning.
He said he feared the Left had exhausted all other efforts to stop the 76-year-old running again in 2024 so was concerned they would kill him.
The FBI searched Trump’s estate as part of a probe into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida mansion.
The ex-president revealed the raid in a lengthy statement and said the Feds broke into a safe at his home as they hunted the documents.
The agents are reported to have seized 15 boxes worth of classified information but have not commented on what they contained.
Trump blasted it as ‘prosecutorial misconduct’ and accused the bureau of double standards for not doing the same to Hillary Clinton.
Bernard Kerik warned he was ‘deathly afraid’ for the former president after the feds descended on Mar-a-Lago yesterday morning
He said he feared the Left had exhausted all other efforts to stop the 76-year-old (pictured in an advert he posted yesterday) running again in 2024 so was concerned they would kill him
Armed Secret Service agents stand outside an entrance to former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, late Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump said in a lengthy statement that the FBI was conducting a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and asserted that agents had broken open a safe
Trump fans descended on Mar-a-Lago last night in a show of the support for the ex-president after the FBI raided his home
Kerik reacted with horror to the raid as he appeared on The Balance with host Eric Bolling last night.
He said: ‘If you remember back in 2016, right before he got elected, I was in Washington D.C.
‘I was at a couple of different social events, and I hear people talking, they said the Democrats want this guy so bad that they wouldn’t put assassination behind it.
‘And I’m gonna tell you something. they’ve tried impeachment, they’ve tried another impeachment, they’ve tried one investigation after another.’
He continued: ‘This is about one thing: this is about stopping him from running in 2024.
‘And I’m gonna tell you something, I’m not into conspiracies, I’m not into anti-government rhetoric.
‘This is the first time in my lifetime that I would say I am deathly afraid for Donald Trump. I would not put assassination behind these people.’
Kerik reacted with horror to the raid as he appeared on The Balance with host Eric Bolling last night
President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower in New York City on Monday night after he announced he FBI had raided his Florida home
‘They even broke into my safe!’ Trump complained of the raid in a blistering take on his Truth Social account
The search intensifies the months-long probe into how classified documents ended up in boxes of White House records located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year.
It occurs amid a separate grand jury probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and adds to the potential legal peril for Trump.
Trump and his allies sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from a 2024 bid.
This is despite the White House saying it had no prior knowledge of it and that FBI director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump five years ago.
Trump wrote: ‘These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.’
He said: ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.’
‘After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.’
Justice Department spokesman Dena Iverson declined to comment on the search, including about whether AG Merrick Garland had personally authorized it.
Trump did not elaborate on the basis for the search but the Justice Department has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information.
The FBI agents were joined by sheriff’s deputies at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago complex to contain the extraordinary scenes
Trump’s supporters were quick to turn out after learning he’d been raided by the FBI. His fans say it’s a double standard and a desperate attempt by the left to thwart a potential 2024 run
Supporters of former President Donald Trump were spotted outside his Mar-a-Lago home on Monday to back the ex-Commander in Chief after it was announced it had been raided by the FBI
Trump confirmed the raid – reportedly as part of an investigation into whether the former president took classified documents with him when he left the White House – on Monday evening
Some came in their cars and were camped out in the beds of their trunks, almost entirely in a show of support for the twice-impeached Trump
It comes after the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year.
The National Archives said Trump should have turned over that material upon leaving office, and it asked the Justice Department to investigate.
There are multiple federal laws governing the handling of classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized location.
Though a search warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected, federal officials looking to obtain one must first demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause that a crime occurred.
Two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the search happened earlier Monday and was related to the records probe.
Agents were also looking to see if Trump had additional presidential records or any classified documents at the estate.
Trump has previously maintained that presidential records were turned over ‘in an ordinary and routine process.’
His son Eric said on Fox News on Monday night he had spent the day with his father and the search happened because ‘the National Archives wanted to corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession’.
Asked how the documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago, Eric said the boxes were among items that got moved out of the White House during ‘six hours’ on Inauguration Day.
He said: ‘My father always kept press clippings. He had boxes, when he moved out of the White House.’
Trump emerged from Trump Tower in New York City shortly before 8 pm and waved to bystanders before being driven away in an SUV.
Many held pro-Trump signs, including ones for a presumptive 2024 campaign and even one for Trump’s previous campaign with former Vice President Mike Pence’s name crossed out
A reporter is heckled by anti-media and pro-Trump protesters across the waterfront from Mar-A-Lago
Authorities stand outside Mar-a-Lago, the residence of former president Donald Trump, amid reports of the FBI executing a search warrant as a part of a document investigation
At least one anti-Trump protester was spotted on the grounds with signs calling Trump names like ‘punk’ and ‘p***y’
One of the protesters was publicly identifying as a member of the far right Proud Boys and the ‘Bikers for Trump’ group
Eric Trump is spotted leaving Trump Tower; he told Fox News that he was the one who got notice of the raid and told his father about it
What WERE FBI agents looking for at Mar-a-Lago?
FBI agents who raided Donald Trump’s Florida estate have been in discussions since June with his legal team about a trove of presidential documents on the property, it emerged on Monday night, as speculation continued to swirl about what exactly they were looking for.
The raid was carried out on Monday, and confirmed by Trump himself. The White House is believed to have learnt of the raid when the rest of the world did, and was not informed in advance.
In February it emerged that Trump had taken classified documents out of the White House when he left in January 2021, and some of those were handed over to the National Archives.
Monday’s raid is thought likely to be related to the remaining boxes of documents, although it remained unclear why the FBI decided to raid the estate.
CNN reported on Monday evening that investigators were at Mar-a-Lago on June 8, meeting Trump’s lawyers to discuss the documents.
Trump was not questioned, the network reported, but stopped by and greeted the investigators and his two attorneys.
The two attorneys then took the investigators to a basement room and showed them where the documents were stored.
Five days later, Trump’s attorneys received a letter asking them to enhance the security on the store room, and a padlock was then placed on the door.
It’s unclear why the FBI then decided to raid the property.
In his first public remarks since news of the search surfaced, Trump made no mention of it during a tele-town hall on behalf of Leora Levy, the Connecticut Republican he has endorsed in Tuesday´s US Senate primary to pick a general election opponent against Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Trump gave his public backing to Levy late last week, calling her on Monday the best pick ‘to replace Connecticut´s joke of a senator.’
But in a social media post he called the search a ‘weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don´t want me to run for President in 2024’.
GOP National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel denounced the search as ‘outrageous’ and said it was a reason for voters to turn out in November.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate, said it was ‘an escalation in the weaponization’ of US government agencies.
Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, said in a tweet that the Justice Department ‘has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization’ and said that if Republicans win control of the U.S. House, they will investigate the department.
That Trump would become entangled in a probe into the handling of classified information is all the more striking given how he tried during the 2016 presidential election to exploit an FBI investigation into his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton over whether she mishandled classified information via a private email server she used as secretary of state.
Then-FBI Director James Comey concluded Clinton had sent and received classified information but the FBI did not recommend criminal charges because it determined Clinton had not intended to break the law.
Trump lambasted that decision and then stepped up his criticism of the FBI as agents began investigating whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.
He fired Comey during that probe, and though he appointed Wray months later, he repeatedly criticized him too as president.
Thomas Schwartz, a Vanderbilt University history professor who studies and writes about the presidency, said there is no precedent for a former president facing an FBI raid – even going back to Watergate.
Some also held invectives against Joe Biden, with one wearing a t-shirt of the president’s face saying ‘Not my Dictator’
Armed Secret Service agents stand outside an entrance to former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday night
President Richard Nixon was not allowed to take tapes or other materials from the White House when he resigned in 1974, Schwartz noted, and many of his papers remained in Washington DC for years before being transferred to his presidential library in California.
‘This is different and it is a sign of how unique the Trump period was,’ said Schwartz, author of ‘Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography.’ ‘How his behavior was so unusual.’
The probe is hardly the only legal headache confronting Trump.
A separate investigation related to efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election – which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol – has also been intensifying in Washington.
Several former White House officials have received grand jury subpoenas.
And a district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, is investigating whether Trump and his close associates sought to interfere in that state’s election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s Florida home: Mar-a-Lago, where agents were reportedly investigating whether Trump took classified documents with him when he left the White House
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