Controversy continues to rage surrounding the legitimacy of the FBI’s August 8 raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. The following week, Eric Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that surveillance cameras captured the search and said his father would release the footage “at the right time.” However, the former president recently told Newsmax he wouldn’t release the raid footage and his reasons for making that decision.
Trump dialed in for a wide-ranging phone interview with “Wake Up America” anchors Rob Finnerty and Alex Kraemer on September 20.
The subject of the recordings came up during the interview. Finnerty asked the former president whether he had any discussions with federal officials regarding releasing video footage of the raid.
Trump responded in the affirmative, adding that “they would rather” he didn’t due to security concerns surrounding the FBI agents who executed the search warrant. He said he still has a great relationship with the bureau but confirmed the footage resembled a “military coup.”
Two constitutional lawyers who worked under the administrations of former presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan went a step further in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. They wrote that the FBI lacked a “legally valid cause for the raid” since former presidents have access to their documents under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
Those attorneys, Lee Casey and David Rivkin Jr. pounded that point, writing that Trump’s rights under that law superseded the FBI’s dubious legal authority cited in its search warrant.
