Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has denounced the "double standard" in US federal enforcement when it comes to Donald Trump.
Weighing in on the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on August 8, he told Sunday Night in America on the Fox News channel:
"Most Republicans, including me, believes when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him. There is a double standard when it comes to Trump.”
Upon raiding Trump’s residence at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, FBI agents reportedly seized at least 27 boxes of documents as part of a DOJ criminal investigation into the removal of presidential records from the White House when Trump left office in January 2021.
The boxes contained 17 sets of classified documents that were labeled top secret, secret, or confidential, according to an inventory list made public by Reinhart on August 12. By law, presidential records must be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration when a POTUS leaves office.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) also released a heavily-redacted copy of its affidavit for the FBI raid on August 26, written by a Special Agent with the FBI assigned to the Washington Field Office. It notes that the US government is "conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records."
28 August 2022, 21:42 GMT
However, GOP Senator Graham points drew parallels with the FBI’s actions in Trump’s case and how the notorious Hunter Biden laptop story was studiously swept under the rug.
The trove of documents from the computer that Joe Biden’s son had abandoned at a repair store in Delaware had shed light on shady overseas business dealings of Hunter Biden and suggested he may have peddled access to his father, then vice president.
Sen. Lindsey Graham also referenced the Hillary Clinton 'emailgate' saga that made headlines during the 2015/2016 presidential cycle.
“What happened with Hunter Biden is that the FBI weighed in to make sure the story didn’t break before the 2020 election. We now have whistleblowers at the FBI telling Sen. [Chuck] Grassley that they were told to slow down and back off Hunter Biden. And I’ll say this, if there is a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle … there will be riots in the street."
Ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was determined to have used unsecured devices to store classified materials and a private email server for government email exchanges. The FBI launched an investigation into the case in the summer of 2015. On July 5, 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey said in a statement that "from the group of 30,000 emails returned to the State Department, 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received."
Nevertheless, despite Comey highlighting the former secretary of state and her aides had been "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," he recommended no criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.
Denouncing how the ‘two-tier legal system’ is enforced in politics regarding conservative Republicans, Graham said:
"You love the law and I love the law. I’ve never been more worried about the law in politics as I am right now. How can you tell a conservative Republican that the system works when it comes to President Trump? What happened in Crossfire Hurricane, it was a joke of an investigation. People lied and manipulated the evidence. Look at what happened to Hunter Biden. They gave him a complete pass, apparently. And social media outlets suppressed information that could have mattered."
Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the investigation undertaken by the FBI from July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, into reported links between Russian officials and associates of Donald Trump and “efforts to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election".
The claims turned out to be completely unsubstantiated, with Trump denouncing the FBI's RussiaGate probe as the "crime of the century." Moscow has also repeatedly denied attempting to meddle in US domestic affairs during the 2016 election.
The GOP senator reiterated his warning that there would be "riots" if Trump was prosecuted.
"If they tried to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street. I worry about the country," he said.
Amid the scandal over the FBI raid, Donald Trump has argued that all the materials in his possession were declassified. He has repeatedly lashed out at the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home as “prosecutorial misconduct and the weaponization of the Justice System.