Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to answer questions about the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, the home of former President Donald Trump.
During a press event, when McConnell was asked about his reaction to the FBI’s raid at Mar-a-Lago, he quickly responded, “I’m here today to talk about the flood and the recovery from the flood.”
Watch:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to answer question about FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence
Q: What was your reaction to the FBI raid yesterday at Mar-a-Lago
McConnell: “I’m here today to talk about the flood and the recovery from the flood” pic.twitter.com/zfiQ0cBO8A
— Mona Salama (@MonaSalama_) August 9, 2022
Breitbart News attempted to reach McConnell’s office for comment earlier Tuesday morning and has not heard back by the time of publication. The minority leader has not made any public announcement regarding the raid and has appeared to show no concern.
At this time, three Republican senators in leadership have issued public statements condemning the raid, including Senate Republican Conference chair John Barrasso (R-WY), National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Rick Scott (R-FL), and Senate Republican Conference vice chair Joni Ernst (R-IA).
At the time, the White House “played dumb” by insisting that President Joe Biden had no prior knowledge of the raid. “The president was not briefed, was not aware of it. No one from the White House was given a head’s up,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed on Tuesday.
On Monday night, the former president, in a lengthy statement, was the first to confirm the FBI raid of his home in Palm Beach.
“These are dark times for our Nation,” as his home “is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” he said in a written statement. “Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
The raid was reportedly focused on documents that Trump allegedly took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. The report claimed that some of the material allegedly taken included classified information.
However, in an interview in May with Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong, Kash Patel, a former top Trump administration official, said the claims that “classified materials were found at Mar-a-Lago are misleading” since the “documents were actually already declassified by then-President Donald Trump, but the classification markings had not been updated.”
Many others responded to the raid, angered at the “abuse of power” by the FBI and the Democrats.
Donald Trump Jr., the eldest child of the former president, also reacted by saying the Democrats are “openly targeting their political enemies.”
“[President Joe] Biden’s out of control DOJ is ripping this country apart with how they’re openly targeting their political enemies,” Trump Jr. stated on social media. “This is what you see happen in 3rd World Banana Republics!!!”
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called the FBI’s “outrageous” raid an “abuse of power” that “must stop” and would be stopped by electing Republicans in November.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless times we have examples of Democrats flouting the law and abusing power with no recourse,” McDaniel added. “Democrats continually weaponize the bureaucracy against Republicans.”
In fact, Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who is running for Congress in the Seventh Congressional District, called for an emergency legislative session to amend the state’s laws on federal agencies and to “sever all ties with DOJ immediately.”
“Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight,” Sabatini said in a fiery statement following the raid.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.
