Republican members of Congress said Tuesday they want to dismantle the FBI or “clean house” at the Department of Justice after agents raided the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump.
“This is Gestapo crap and it will not stand. The Department of Injustice needs to be cleaned out if they are going to start pretending we are some kind of banana republic,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, Colorado Republican, said in a Twitter video.
Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona Republican, also invoked the Nazi era, tweeting: “I will support a complete dismantling and elimination of the democrat brown shirts known as the FBI. This is too much for our republic to withstand.”
Others espoused a simple twist on the “defund the police” rhetoric that some liberal voices have used to call for social services in place of law enforcement.
“DEFUND THE FBI!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, posted.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Attorney General Merrick Garland should preserve documents and clear his calendar because the GOP will investigate the raid if they retake the majority. Ms. Boebert made a similar vow in her Twitter video.
SEE ALSO: Trump: FBI agents ‘raided’ Mar-a-Lago, breached safe
Mr. Trump on Monday said a large group of FBI agents raided his estate and broke into his safe. The raid appeared to be linked to investigations into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents.
While GOP voices decried the action as a weaponization of federal law enforcement, critics of the former president saw deep irony because Republicans tend to vocally support law enforcement, only to object to this operation.
Mr. Trump appointed the current FBI director, Christopher Wray in 2017.
In the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump ran on a law-and-order platform, while his supporters shouted “Lock her up!” over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican who also ran for president in 2016, said that he would go after Mrs. Clinton if he were elected president.
“Absolutely, yes, and there is a principle here that matters,” Mr. Cruz told Fox News’s Sean Hannity at the time.
On Tuesday, Mr. Cruz objected to the Mar-a-Lago raid as politically motivated.
“The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented. It is corrupt & an abuse of power,” he tweeted. “What Nixon tried to do, Biden has now implemented: The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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