Florida governor Ron DeSantis has defended Donald Trump after Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents executed a search warrant at the former president’s Palm Beach, Florida, home at his Mar-a-Lago club on Monday evening.
In a statement on Twitter, Governor DeSantis hit out at the Biden administration.
“The raid of MAL [Mar-a-Lago] is another escalation in the weaponisation of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.”
Mr DeSantis won the 2018 Florida GOP gubernatorial primary in large part because of an endorsement from the former president.
However, the two do not have a close relationship. Mr DeSantis even declined to ask Trump for an endorsement ahead of his 2022 re-election bid, reported Politico.
On Monday, announcing the raid at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump also claimed, without offering evidence, that the raid on his Palm Beach residence was “prosecutorial misconduct” and “the weaponisation of the justice system” meant to keep him from running for president the 2024 election.
He said his private residence was “currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents” who, among other things, “broke into” a safe belonging to him.
The former president is being investigated for his push to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He is being probed for his role in last January’s Capitol riot by a congressional committee.
Archivist David Ferriero told the January 6 committee in February that the National Archives and Records Administration had been in communication with Mr Trump throughout 2021 about the return of 15 boxes of records that the former president reportedly took with him to his Florida residence in violation of federal law.
He eventually returned them in January 2022.
On Monday evening, the former president’s son Eric Trump said the raids appeared to be in connection with the boxes of documents taken to Mar-a-Lago.
